Bilkis Bano, a survivor of rape, asked the Supreme Court to hold an open hearing on her request for review of the SC's May 13 decision allowing Gujarat to consider the remission pleas of 11 lifers who were convicted of gang-raping many people and killing 14 during the state's 2002 communal riots. She also filed a writ petition to challenge the BJP-ruled state's decision to arbitrarily and inappropriately release the convict.
Before a bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justice P S Narasimha, counsel Shobha Gupta sought an urgent hearing of the two petitions filed by Bilkis. According to the CJI, a bench presided over by Justice Ajay Rastogi is currently hearing the earlier petitions (filed by Subhasini Ali and others) contesting the grant of remission and release of prisoners. “I'll look into the possibility of listing both of these petitions - the review and the writ by Bilkis - before the same bench. I'll give the necessary orders.”
On August 10, the state commuted the sentences of the convicts under the 1992 Rules on the grounds that they had already served more than 14 years in prison. Importantly, the state government had conceded that the remission proposal was opposed by both the trial court judge at Mumbai, where the trial was shifted from Gujarat on the SC’s orders, and the prosecuting agency CBI on the ground that the convicts did not deserve remission as they had committed heinous offences in a gruesome manner.
Bilkis in both her pleas narrated the 2002 incident as “one of the most gruesome and heinous crime of multiple gang rape of a five month pregnant woman (Bilkis), gang rape and murder of her mother, and her cousin sister who was weak due to child delivery. Brutal murder of 8 minors, including a two-day-old girl child of her cousin, her three-and-a-half year-old daughter (her first child) by smashing her head on a rock, her two minor brothers and sisters, and other relatives.”