Bilkis Bano case: Police ‘closely monitoring’ 11 convicts ahead of surrender
Police superintendent Balram Meena said that arrangements were put in place at Singvad village in Dahod, where the convicts live, a day before the verdict
Police in Gujarat’s Dahod were “closely monitoring” the 11 men convicted of gang-raping Bilkis Bano and murdering her seven relatives during the 2002 Gujarat riots, a police officer said a day after the Supreme Court on Monday quashed the early release of the convicts.
Police superintendent Balram Meena said that arrangements were put in place at Singvad village in Dahod, where the convicts live, a day before the verdict. “We have taken all necessary steps to ensure that law and order is not disturbed. We are aware of the whereabouts of all the convicts and most of them are home. A couple of them are out to attend some social function and we are monitoring them closely,” he said.
Meena said that police were in touch with convicts over their phones while denying media reports that they were incommunicado. He added that arrangements were made in anticipation of the order of the Supreme Court, which has asked the convicts to surrender within two weeks.
Bano, who moved the Supreme Court in November 2022 saying the freeing of the convicts had “shaken society’s conscience, said she collapsed when those who destroyed her family and terrorised her existence were released early. “I felt I had exhausted my reservoir of courage. Until a million solidarities came my way.”
Bano, who relocated from her native Randhikpur village along with her family due to safety concerns days before the verdict, acknowledged thousands of ordinary people and women who stood with, spoke to her, and filed pleas on her behalf. “6000 people from all over, and 8500 people from Mumbai wrote appeals; 10,000 people wrote an Open Letter, as did 40,000 people from 29 districts of Karnataka. To each of these people, my gratitude for your precious solidarity and strength. You gave me the will to struggle, to rescue the idea of justice not just for me, but for every woman in India. I thank you,” Bano said in a statement.
The Supreme Court said the Gujarat government was complicit with the prisoners and wrongly exercised its power to order their premature release while scrapping the remission. It said Gujarat usurped the power of Maharashtra, where the convicts were tried, to grant it.
The court nullified a 2022 judgment directing Gujarat to consider the remission applications of the 11 convicts, saying it was obtained by “playing fraud”.
Bano was three-month pregnant when she was gang raped. Her three-year-old daughter was among seven of her relatives killed in the riots, which claimed the lives of 1,000 people.
The burning of a train carrying Hindu pilgrims that left 59 people dead in Godhra in February 2002 triggered the riots. Bano and her family were among those trying to escape from Randhikpur to Devgadh Baria when they were attacked in a forested region days later. The attack left 14 people, including seven members of Bano’s family, dead.
