The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the arguments presented by the eleven convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, who had requested further time to turn themselves up, “have no merit.”
On January 8, the Supreme Court ordered the prisoners to turn themselves in to the jail administration within two weeks, nullifying the clemency that the Gujarati government had given. The cutoff date is January 21st.
With various personal reasons—such as poor health, an upcoming surgery, their son’s marriage, and crop harvesting—the criminals had petitioned the Supreme Court for an extension on their time to surrender.
Dismissing their pleas, a bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said on Friday: “We have heard learned senior counsel and counsel for the applicants and the counsel for the non-applicants also. The reasons cited by the applicants to seek postponement of surrender and report back to jail have no merit inasmuch as those reasons in no way prevent them from complying with our directions. Hence the MAs (miscellaneous applications) are dismissed. Pending applications if any also stand disposed.”
On March 3, 2002, during the riots in Gujarat’s Dahod district’s Limkheda taluka, Bilkis Bano was gangraped and her three-year-old daughter was among the fourteen persons slain by a mob. At the moment, she was expecting.
A Mumbai CBI court found the 11 men guilty in 2008. In 2004, the Supreme Court moved the case’s trial from Gujarat to Maharashtra, citing “exceptional circumstances.”
The Jail Advisory Committee’s “unanimous” recommendation to grant the 11 convicts remission on the grounds of “good behaviour” led the Gujarat government to release them on August 15, 2023, in accordance with its 1992 remission and premature release policy.
After PILs opposing the release of the convicts were filed in the Supreme Court, Bilkis Bano herself moved the court.
The relief granted to the Gujarati government was invalidated by the Supreme Court on January 8, stating that they were not the “appropriate government” to deliberate on the remission plea.
