The Supreme Court today dismissed the pleas filed by all the eleven Bilkis Bano case convicts seeking further time to surrender before jail authorities. The apex court said that the reasons cited by the convicts seeking extension of time to surrender lacked merits and those in no way prevent them from complying with the Court’s direction.
It added that the convicts will have to surrender before the jail authorities by January 21, the original deadline set by the Court as per its January 8 judgment which set aside their premature release. A bench comprising Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan heard multiple applications filed by the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case seeking an extension of time to surrender before jail authorities.
Earlier on Janaury 8, the Supreme Court set aside the remission orders passed by the Gujarat government allowing the premature release of the 11 convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for multiple murders and gang rapes against the backdrop of the 2002 Gujarat communal riots.
Reportedly, the life-termers were released early by the State of Gujarat in August 2022 after serving 14 years of sentence, in terms of a 1992 remission policy. Nonetheless, the bench ruled that the State of Gujarat lacked jurisdiction to grant remission in the case as the trial was held in the State of Maharashtra and granted the convicts two weeks time till this Sunday to surrender.
Senior Advocate V Chitambaresh, appearing for three convicts, mentioned their applications before a bench led by Justice Nagarathna yesterday morning seeking an urgent hearing of the extension pleas. Justice Nagarathna in response directed the registry to obtain instructions from Chief Justice DY Chandrachud on the issue of reconstitution of the bench that handed out this verdict and the listing of the applications today.
Following an 11-day-long hearing that commenced in August, a division bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan had reserved its judgement in this case on October 12. Advocate Shobha Gupta appeared for Bilkis Bano, while Senior Advocates Indira Jaising, and advocates Vrinda Grover, Aparna Bhat, Nizamuddin Pasha, and Pratik R Bombarde represented various public interest litigants.
Additional Solicitor-General SV Raju appeared for both the State of Gujarat and the Union of India. The convicts were represented by Senior advocates Sidharth Luthra, Rishi Malhotra, S Guru Krishnakumar, Advocate Sonia Mathur, and others.