Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Monday said that the Supreme Court’s verdict, striking down the remission of 11 convicts found guilty of the rape of Bilkis Bano during the post-Godhra Gujarat riots in 2002, stood as a symbol of victory of justice against the arrogant government of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“The tendency to ‘murder justice’ for electoral gains is dangerous for the democratic system. The Supreme Court’s decision today has once again revealed to the country who the ‘patron of criminals’ are,” Rahul said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Rahul further said that Bilkis Bano’s tireless struggle symbolises the victory of justice against the arrogant BJP government.
A division bench of the Supreme Court today ruled that the premature release of the 11 convicts by the Government of Gujarat on August 15, 2022, was bad in law and ordered them to surrender before jail authorities within 14 days.
The court said that the remission orders passed by the Gujarat government were “an instance of usurpation of powers” since only Maharashtra could have passed the remission orders since the trial was held in the state.
The court also passed some strong observations against the Gujarat government and observed that the Gujarat government, in passing the remission orders, acted “in complicity and in tandem” with one of the convicts in the case.