Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on January 8 quashed the Gujarat government’s decision to grant remission to 11 convicts involved in the case of the gang-rape of Bilkis Bano and murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The apex court held that the judgement of May 13, 2022 (which directed the Gujarat government to consider remission of convict) was obtained by ‘playing fraud’ on the court and by suppressing material facts.
The convicts had not approached the court with clean hands, the apex court observed.
Noting that the state, where an offender is tried and sentenced, is competent to decide the remission plea of convicts, the apex court held that Gujarat was not competent to pass the remission orders but the Maharashtra Government.
In March 2002, during the post-Godhra riots, Bano was allegedly gang-raped and left to die with 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter. She was five months pregnant when rioters attacked her family in Vadodara.
