Read Time: 05 minutes

Synopsis

The Gujarat government has approached the Supreme Court of India against the January 18 judgment quashing the Gujarat Government's order granting remission to 11 convicts who had gangraped Bilkis Bano in Gujarat in 2002.

A review petition has been filed seeking expunction of the remarks made by the top court's bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan calling out the government for having acted in tandem with accused.

"We fail to understand why the state of Gujarat did not file a review petition against the direction of this court asking it to consider the remission applications, when the appropriate government was in fact the State of Maharashtra.", court said in the impugned judgment.

State of Gujarat has asserted that it was acting as per the Supreme Court's May 2022 judgment which directed it to consider the remission application of one of the convicts and thus it could not be held to have 'usurped' the jurisdiction of the State of Maharashtra when it was acting on the Supreme Court's directions.

Recently, the supreme court had also dismissed the applications filed by the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case seeking an extension of four to six weeks to surrender before the concerned jails.

In October last year, Supreme Court had reserved its judgment in the pleas filed by Bilkis Bano and different PIL petitioners challenging the remission granted to 11 convicts who had gangraped Bano in Gujarat in 2002.

Supreme Court in July 2023 had started hearing the final arguments in all pleas filed against the remission granted to 11 convicts.  Earlier, the Supreme Court had constituted a bench of Justices KM Joseph and BV Nagarathna to hear the petition filed by rape survivor Bano, but due to Justice Joseph's retirement, the bench's composition changed.

In her petition, Bano 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 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.

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