The Supreme Court on Monday quashed the Gujarat government order granting remission to 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case. The court ordered the 11 to surrender within two weeks.
Hearing the plea, a bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan observed that the plea was maintainable and said victim’s rights are important. “Victim’s rights also important. A woman deserves respect. Can heinous crimes against women permit remission? These are the issues which arise,” LiveLaw reported.
Observing the Gujarat government lacked the competence to grant remission to the convicts, reading the judgment, Justice Nagarathna said the government of the state where the convicts are sentenced was the appropriate government to grant remission and not the government where the offence took place. The bench observed that the convict made misleading statements, suppressed facts while filing petition for remission.
The bench said the May 13,2022, order directing the Gujarat government to consider remission is “a nullity as it was obtained by playing fraud on the Court and by suppressing material facts.”
The case involves the gangrape of Bano and the murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped while fleeing the horror of the communal riots that broke out after the Godhra train burning incident. Her three-year-old daughter was among the seven family members killed in the riots.
Directing the eleven convicts in the case to surrender in prison within two weeks, the Court said, “Rule of law must prevail”. “We hold that deprivation of liberty to the respondents (convicts) is justified. They have lost their right to liberty once they were convicted and imprisoned. Also, if they want to seek remission again, it is important that they have to be in jail,” the Court said.
