The Supreme Court has set aside the decision of the Gujarat government granting remission to 11 rape convicts sentenced to life terms for the gangrape of Bilkis Bano and killing her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The Court asked the 11 convicts to surrender within two weeks.
The Supreme Court held that the Maharashtra government and not Gujarat government was competent to pass orders. The bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan delivered the verdict in the batch of petitions challenging the early release of convicts in the gangrape case.
The arguments primarily focused on whether the State had followed uniform standards while granting early remission to the 11 men when murder convicts tend to otherwise languish in prison for years.
The Gujarat government had relied on its remission policy of 1992 to approve the convicts’ applications for remission of the sentence and not the current policy of 2014. The men were released in August last year.
Bilkis Bano had challenged the remission granted by the Gujarat government to 11 persons convicted for raping Bilkis Bano and murdering her family members during the Godhra riots in 2002.
The Court today said the Gujarat government should have taken the permission of the Apex Court for passing remission orders.
The Court held that it is not the government of the State within whose territory the offence has occurred which can pass the remission and so the order of remission has to be quashed.
The Court in its judgment also took one of the convicts, Radhyesham, to task for playing fraud by hiding material facts from the top court in May 2022 which eventually led to the release of all the 11 convicts.
The Apex Court said the judgement of May 2022 came in an Article 32 petition filed by one of the convicts (respondent no. 3) after his petition was dismissed by the Gujarat High Court which said that the Maharashtra government will have to consider the plea for remission.
He then filed a remission application in Maharashtra and presiding judge of trial and DGP Maharashtra had given their opinion on it.
Meanwhile, he moved the Supreme Court suppressing these facts and the Supreme Court passed a judgment in his favour opining that the Gujarat government was the appropriate government to decide.
The Court said that the May 2022 judgment was obtained by fraud and therefore not good in law.
The convicts released were Jaswant Nai, Govind Nai, Shailesh Bhatt, Radhyesham Shah, Bipin Chandra Joshi, Kesarbhai Vohania, Pradeep Mordhiya, Bakabhai Vohania, Rajubhai Soni, Mitesh Bhatt and Ramesh Chandana.