Bilkis Bano case: Supreme Court ruling path-breaking, says Mumbai Trial court Judge

File Photo/PTI

Mumbai trail court judge who had sentenced 11 men to life imprisonment in Bilkis Bano case on Monday said that the Supreme Court's ruling cancelling the remission granted to the convicted individuals by Gujarat government is "path-breaking and encouraging."

Justice U D Salvi, now retired, had in 2008 convicted the 11 men in Bilkis Bano case, whose trial was held in Mumbai, newswire PTI reported.

The convicts were granted remission by the Gujarat government, leading to their premature release from a jail in Gujarat on August 15, 2022. This decision was challenged in the apex court by the victim, Bilkis Bano, and others.

On Monday, the Supreme Court quashed the Gujarat government's remission order and directed the convicts to surrender in two weeks. "This is a path-breaking and encouraging judgment. It will provide a path of guidance in other cases," Justice Salvi told newswire PTI.

The Supreme Court, in its ruling, has rightly noted that the Gujarat government had played a "fraud" and obtained the May 2022 order of the apex court in the Bilkis Bano case asking the state government to decide on the convicts' remission plea based on an old policy existing in 1992, he said.

The retired judge said the top court has considered the plight of the victim (Bano) and what she had endured.

The apex court, in its order, held the convicts in the case were tried and sentenced in Maharashtra. Hence, it was Maharashtra, and not Gujarat (where the offence took place), which had to consider plea to remit the sentence of the culprits.

Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was raped while fleeing the horror of the communal riots that broke out after the Godhra train burning incident in February 2002. Her three-year-old daughter was among her seven family members killed in the riots in Limkheda taluka of Gujarat's Dahod district on March 3, 2002.

Meanwhile, the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party on Monday said "Bilkis Bano has finally got justice" after the Supreme Court quashed the Gujarat government's decision to grant remission to 11 convicts in the case of her gangrape and murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 riots in that state.

"Today, Bilkis Bano finally got justice. The remission decision exposes BJP's stand to talk about Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, blowing the trumpet of bringing Women's Reservation Bill on one hand and shielding the people who unleash atrocities on women on other hand," the NCP said in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Holding the PIL challenging the remission as maintainable, an SC bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said the Gujarat government was not the appropriate government to pass the remission order. (With inputs from agencies)