The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that it will hear the plea of 2002 riots survivor Bilkis Bano along with a batch of petitions challenging the remission of the 11 convicts from a Godhra sub-jail, news agency PTI reported. The date is yet to be fixed.
A bench of Justice Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi took up the batch of pleas against the release of the convicts. After spending over 15 years in jail, the 11 convicts on August 15, 2021 walked out of prison cell after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Gujarat government allowed their release under its remission policy.
However, SC judge Justice Bela M Trivedi recused herself from hearing the pleas. “Since my sister judge has already recused from hearing the victim’s plea, she would like to recuse from hearing this matter also,” Justice Rastogi said.
Justice Rastogi said now that the victim has approached this court challenging the remission to convicts, her plea will be taken as a lead matter. The rest of the petitions will be tagged along with her plea when the bench will sit with a different combination of judges, Justice Rastogi said.
“We will list all the matters on the next date and tag along all the petitions. All the pleadings should be complete by then,” the bench said, as quoted by PTI.
In her writ petition against the grant of remission, Bano stated that the state government had passed a mechanical order completely ignoring the requirement of law as laid down by the Supreme Court.
The Bilkis Bano case
The 11 convicts had gang-raped Bano, who was 19 years and pregnant at that time, in Limkheda taluka of Dahod district on March 3, 2002, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state.
Bano’s three-year-old daughter Saleha, including fourteen members of her family, were murdered in the violence.
The investigation in the case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Supreme Court had transferred the trial to Maharashtra after she faced death threats in Gujarat.
The 11 men were sent to life imprisonment by a special CBI court on January 21, 2008, in Mumbai, and their conviction was later upheld by the Bombay High Court and the apex court.