SC gives a jolt to Gujarat in Bilkis case, critical comments will not be removed
#News Bureau September 26,2024
In the Bilkis Bano case, the Supreme Court has again given a blow to the Gujarat government. It has said that the comments made by it criticizing the state government will not be removed. The apex court had made sharp comments on the state government regarding the exemption given to 11 people convicted in the Bilkis Bano case. The state government had filed a petition demanding the removal of some of the previous comments of the Supreme Court. The court rejected it on Thursday.
The bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuiyan said, ‘After carefully studying the review petitions, the challenged order and the documents attached with them, we have come to the conclusion that there is no such discrepancy in the record or there is no such merit in the review petitions due to which the order should be reconsidered.’
In its petition, the Gujarat government argued that the Supreme Court in its order held the state guilty of ‘usurpation of power’ and ‘abuse of discretion’, which was clearly in error on the face of the record, as it had complied with the order of another bench of the apex court.
However, a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjwal Bhuyan disagreed. It said that after carefully going through the review petitions, the challenged order and other documents, we are satisfied that there is no error on the face of the record.
Bilkis Bano was gang-raped by a mob on March 3, 2002. Her family members were killed. Her three-year-old daughter was among the seven family members killed during the attack. The incident took place in Limkheda taluka of Dahod district. Bilkis was pregnant at the time. Bilkis was 21 years old at that time.
11 convicts serving life sentence in the Bilkis Bano case were released on August 15 in 2022.
When the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang rape case came out of jail under the Gujarat government’s remission policy, they were garlanded and fed sweets after their release. This release case was challenged in the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court had cancelled the Gujarat government’s decision to release the 11 convicts in January this year. The Supreme Court ordered that all the 11 convicts will surrender in the court within 15 days and from there they will be sent to jail. The Supreme Court had said that the Gujarat government is not capable of releasing these people and this decision depends on the Maharashtra government. The Supreme Court said, ‘The remission order is not valid.’
The Supreme Court had then said that the remission order lacked merit. It slammed the Gujarat government for passing such an order ‘without much thought’. The court also said that the convicts can only be released by the state that prosecuted them in the first place; in this case, that state was Maharashtra. The court had said, ‘The exercise of power by Gujarat is an example of abuse of power.’
While passing this order, the court also strongly criticised the judgment given by Justice Ajay Rastogi (retired) in May 2022, in which the convicts were allowed to appeal to the Gujarat government for their early remission. The judges said that the convicts had obtained the order ‘through fraud’. They also said that the Gujarat government should have sought a review of the 2022 order.
Let us tell you that Gujarat had released the convicts on the basis of the old remission policy of 1992. This was changed by a law in 2014 which prohibits the release of convicts in death penalty cases. The policy of giving remission to people sentenced to life imprisonment which was in place in Gujarat since 1992 had a provision to release even rapists and murderers after 14 years, but in the policy made after 2014, the provision of giving remission in the sentence of such prisoners was removed.
