The remission granted to 11 convicts who were given life sentences in the Bilkis Bano gang rape and murder case has been dismissed by a Supreme Court bench led by Justice B.V. Nagarathna. The court argued that the Gujarat government lacked the authority to grant remission. All of the prisoners were ordered by the court to appear before the jail personnel in two weeks.
The bench said the appropriate government to decide on remission is the state within whose territorial limits the accused are sentenced and not where the crime is committed or the accused are imprisoned.
The bench further found that fraud and fact-suppression were used to achieve the May 13, 2022, SC ruling, which instructed the Gujarat Government to determine the remission in accordance with the 1992 policy. As a result, the order is null and void and any actions taken in compliance with it are illegal.
Given that the Gujarat government was not the right government and that this was a classic example of the SC ruling being exploited to violate the rule of law in order to pass orders for remission, the court questioned why the government had not filed any application seeking a review of the May 13, 2022, order.
The Gujarat State’s use of its authority, according to the court, is an example of usurpation and misuse of authority. 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 killed by a mob. At that time, she was pregnant.
August 15, 2023 witnessed the release of the 11 prisoners under the Gujarat government’s 1992 remission and premature release programme. This came about after one of the prisoners, Radheshyam Shah, who had been given a life sentence by a Mumbai CBI court in 2008, petitioned the Supreme Court following his 15 years and 4 months in prison.
After considering his plea, the Supreme Court ruled on May 13, 2022, stating that even though the case was tried in Maharashtra, the Gujarat government would be the “appropriate government” to determine whether to process the convicts’ sentences in accordance with the 1992 policy, which was in effect at the time the crime was committed.
In 2004, the Supreme Court moved the Gujarat trial to Mumbai, citing “exceptional circumstances.” The state administration granted the remission, citing the Jail Advisory Committee’s (JAC) “unanimous” recommendation to do so on the grounds of the prisoners’ “good behaviour.”
बिलकिस बानो केस में सुप्रीम कोर्ट का अहम फैसला
गुजरात सरकार का फ़ैसला पलटा .
जेल में फिर ठूँसें जाएँगे दरिंदे #BilkisBano pic.twitter.com/bTMhhEox4v— Ajit Anjum (@ajitanjum) January 8, 2024
