New Delhi: The Supreme Court agreed on Friday, October 21, to hear a fresh plea moved by a women’s organisation, challenging the remission of sentence and the release of convicts who in 2002 gang-raped Bilkis Bano and murdered 14 people, some of whom were her family members, during the Gujarat riots.
A bench of justices Ajay Rastogi and C.T. Ravikumar tagged the matter with the main petition and said it would be heard along with it.
The top court will hear the plea filed by the National Federation of Indian Women, challenging the remission of sentence and the release of convicts in the case. The seven-decade-old organisation is headed by Aruna Roy and is the women’s wing of the Communist Party of India.
In August, senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Subhashini Ali, independent journalist and filmmaker Revati Laul, and former philosophy professor and activist Roop Rekha Varma filed a PIL against the remission of sentence.
The top court bench is also considering the petitions filed by Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, ex-IPS officer Meeran Chadha Borwankar, ex-IFS officer Madhu Badhuri, and activist Jagdeep Chhokar.
The 11 men convicted in the case walked out of the Godhra sub-jail on August 15 after the Gujarat government allowed their release under its remission policy – with the permission of the Union government.
The court had, on October 18, said the Gujarat government’s reply to petitions challenging the remission is “very bulky,” and in it, a series of judgments have been quoted but factual statements are missing.
It granted time to the petitioners to file their response to the Gujarat government’s affidavit and said it will hear the matter on November 29.
Though the Gujarat government had told the Supreme Court that the 11 men were released because of their “good behaviour”, reports have emerged that one of them was accused of harassing a woman while he was out on parole.
The reports also said that the men had spent nearly or over 1,000 days outside prison prior to their release. The Wire
