New Delhi: In a setback to Bilkis Bano, the Supreme Court has dismissed her review petition challenging its 13 May order that had held that the Gujarat government was the appropriate authority to consider the remission plea of 11 life convicts who had allegedly raped her during the Godhra riots, and that their plea for premature release should be decided under the state’s remission policy of 1992 when they were convicted.
Bano’s review petition was listed in the chambers on 13 December. The bench comprising justices Ajay Rastogi and Vikram Nath dismissed the review petition after opining that “no case for review is made out”.
The four-day-old, one-page order was uploaded on the Supreme Court’s official website Saturday evening. However, Bano’s lawyer Shobha Gupta was informed about the dismissal only on Friday evening via a two-line letter dispatched to her office from the SC registry.
Till the time the order was uploaded, Gupta was unaware of the reasons for the dismissal.
The uploaded order said: “We have perused the review petition as well as the connected papers in support thereof and the judgments referred to by the review petitioner. In our opinion, there appears no error apparent on the face of record, which may call for review of the judgment dated 13th May, 2022 and as regards the judgments on which the reliance has been placed, none of the judgments are of any assistance to the review petitioner”.
However, some writ petitions filed by Bano against the release are yet to be heard by the court.
A review petition is decided through circulation among the judges constituting the bench. Under the rules, it is not heard in the open unless there are some grave reasons. A death sentence case is the only exception to this rule. The only remedy against rejection of a review is a curative petition in the top court.
Also read: Modi govt approved premature release of 11 convicts in Bilkis Bano case, Gujarat tells SC
The story so far
Bano was gangraped in the 2002 post-Godhra riots and the head of her three-year-old-daughter was smashed while 11 other members of her family were killed by a mob in Limkheda taluka of Dahod district in Gujarat.
The trial of the case was transferred to Mumbai on the orders of the apex court. Their conviction and life term sentence was sustained by the Supreme Court.
Upon completion of 14 years of their sentence, one of the convicts Radheyshyam Bhagwandas Shah, moved the SC, claiming his application for remission should be considered by Gujarat government and not Maharashtra where the trial took place.
He pleaded that the remission policy applicable in the case would be of 1992 and not the current one that bars out-of-turn release of convicts in rape and murder cases.
Relying on one of its earlier rulings, the top court bench led by Justice Rastogi held the remission of the convicts in the case should be considered as per the the policy existing at the time of conviction in the state where the crime was actually committed. Eventually, the convicts were released on 15 August.
In her review petition, Bano said the 13 May court order suffered from “non-application of mind” because it was issued without hearing her. She said the convict had withheld “relevant facts and aspects of vital importance” from the SC including the nature of the crime and her name.
She said the language of the law was unambiguous and that the appropriate government to decide matters of remission is the state where the accused was convicted and sentenced and not the state where the crime was committed or the accused belonged to.
However, the law points raised in Bano’s review plea are still alive. The SC has already issued notice on two writ petitions — one by CPI(M) leader Subhashini Ali, journalist Revati Laul and academician Roop Rekha Verma, and another by TMC MP Mahua Moitra — that assail its 13 May order.
The petitioners had argued that the remission was granted by the state without the sanction of the Union government.
In response to these petitions, the Gujarat government filed its affidavit, defended its decision to release them prematurely, saying it was done with the Centre’s nod. The state has also opposed the writ petitions, questioning the locus standi of the petitioners. It justified the release on the grounds of convicts’ “good behaviour”.
The 11 convicts have raised a similar argument in their response, adding the petitioners being third parties cannot be entertained by the court.
Subsequently, Bano too filed a writ petition which is yet to be taken up by the court. Her petition was listed on 13 December before a bench of justices Rastogi and Bela Trivedi. But it could not be heard due to Justice Trivedi’s recusal. The judge said since she was from Gujarat, she would not like to be a member of the bench hearing the petition related to Godhra riots.
When Bano’s lawyer Gupta mentioned the case the next day before Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud’s bench for listing it before the court shuts down for winter break, she was snubbed by the judges for “irritating” them by mentioning the matter “again and again”.
(Edited by V.S. Chandrasekar)
Also read: Bilkis Bano case convicts controversy: Why the 11 were released under ‘old’ 1992 policy