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The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that the Gujarat Government should have paid heed to the gravity of offence in terms of the gang rape of Bilkis Bano, while granting parole to her convicts.

"Apples and Oranges cannot be compared. It was a horrendous act," said a bench of Justice KM Joseph & BV Nagarathna while putting up the plea's challenging the remission granted to the convicts on May 2 for a final decision. Court also said that a single murder and a massacre cannot be compared.

Court also pointed out that it has come across many cases in which persons have been languishing in jail for years on end without being considered for remission. "Is this being applied uniformly?", the bench asked the government.

On August 16, 2022 all 11 life imprisonment convicts in the 2002 post-Godhra Bilkis Bano gang-rape case of Gujarat were released from the Godhra sub-jail after a state government panel approved their application for remission of sentence. The remission order was passed on an earlier Supreme Court order.

This created a massive uproar. As a result, various political leaders including TMC leader Mahua Moitra approached the Supreme Court challenging the remission, apart from Bilkis Bano herself.

In her petition, Bano has stated that she was not even made party respondent by the accused persons in the writ petition concerning remission and that this was the reason that she had absolutely no information of the filing or pendency of the said writ petition or the order passed therein by the Top Court till the writ petitioner and other 10 co-convicts/prisoners were prematurely released on 15.08.2022.

She has submitted that the accused persons concealed important documents/ material from the Supreme Court which are very necessary for proper adjudication of the review petition and issue in hand, the present petitioner would therefore be filing an application seeking permission to bring on record additional facts and documents.

She has stated that the accused persons remained absolutely silent and did not disclose the egregious nature of the crime for which the writ petitioner and his co-accused were convicted by the Trial Court, High Court and the Top Court, which is nothing less than deliberately playing fraud upon the Apex Court with an intention to mislead.

She has further alleged that the accused persons have concealed the facts of interference by the Supreme Court in this case at a very initial stage when the criminal case was closed by the State Investigating Agency and the trial court concerned on the ground that the accused are not traceable.

“The matter was reopened only due to intervention of this Hon'ble Court at that stage. The Central Bureau of Investigation was directed by this Hon’ble Court to conduct the investigation afresh. It is only thereafter the accused could be brought to book, extremely shocking facts were revealed showing deliberate acts by the concerned police officials and the doctors to frustrate the investigation and the evidence, charge-sheet was filed which finally resulted into conviction of all the 11 accused,” the plea read.

She has stated that the accused persons have very cleverly hidden the name of the victim i.e. Bilkis Bano who is alive. She also stated that the accused persons did not challenge the order of the Gujarat High Court that dismissed their Writ petition holding that their case for remission can only be considered by the State of Maharashtra and not by the State of Gujarat as he was convicted by the Court of State of Maharashtra.

Bilkis Bano was 5 months pregnant and 21 years old when she was gang raped by 11 men in the riots that broke out after the 2002 Godhra train burning carnage. Seven of her family members were killed in the riots.

Case Title: Bilkis Yakub Rasool vs. Union of India & Ors. | Batch of petitions