The Supreme Court on Monday directed the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case to surrender before jail authorities within two weeks after it held that the plea challenging their early release from Gujarat jail was maintainable. The top cout on Monday gave its judgment on the batch of pleas, including one by Bano, against the remission order of Gujarat government for early release of the convicts.
The judgment in the matter was reserved by a bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan on October 12 last year after an 11-day hearing on the petitions.
Pronouncing the judgment on Monday, Justice Nagarathna noted that the Gujarat government was not competent to pass the remission order when the trial was being held in Mumbai. The court also observed that the convicts who had filed the Gujarat government's direction considering remission did so by suppressing relevant facts and also made misleading statements.
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During the hearing, the Supreme Court had questioned the parole given to the 11 convicts saying the gravity of the offence should have been considered by the state. "Apples cannot be compared with oranges, similarly massacre cannot be compared with single murder," the court said.
Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five month pregnant when she was gangraped while fleeing the horrors of the communal riots that had broken out after the train-burning incident in Gujarat's Godahra in 2002.
The case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation and was transferred from Gujarat to Mumbai. A special court in Mumbai awarded life imprisonment to the 11 convicts who were serving their sentence in Godhara sub-jail. But, on August 15, 2022, the Gujarat government allowed all the convicts to be released from the jail.
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The 11 convicts were: Jaswantbhai Nai, Govindbhai Nai, Shailesh Bhatt, Radhesham Shah, Bipin Chandra Joshi, Kesarbhai Vohania, Pradeep Mordhiya, Bakabhai Vohania, Rajubhai Soni, Mitesh Bhatt, and Ramesh Chandana.
Following their early release, a batch of pleas were filed in the apex court against the remission order. Trinamool Congress' Mahua Moitra, Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPI-M) leader Subhashini Ali, journalist Revati Laul, and professor and social activist Roop Rekha Verma were among the petitioners.
During the hearing, the Supreme Court had questioned the parole given to the 11 convicts saying the gravity of the offence should have been considered by the state. "Apples cannot be compared with oranges, similarly massacre cannot be compared with single murder," the court said.