Bilkis Bano case: SC rejects Gujarat's review plea against scathing observations
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan also denied the request to list the review petition in open court.
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea from the Gujarat government seeking to review its decision, which criticised the state while overturning the remission given to 11 men convicted of raping Bilkis Bano and killing seven of her family members during the 2002 riots.
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan also denied the request to list the review petition in open court.
“Having carefully gone through the review petitions, the order under challenge and the papers annexed therewith, we are satisfied that there is no error apparent on the face of the record or any merit in the review petitions, warranting reconsideration of the order impugned. The review petitions are accordingly dismissed,” the bench said.
In its plea, the Gujarat government argued that the Supreme Court's January 8 judgment, which found the state guilty of “usurpation of power” and “abuse of discretion” for following an order from another bench, contained an “error apparent on the face of the record” based on three main grounds.
Bilkis 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 the seven family members killed. All 11 convicts were granted remission by the Gujarat government and released on August 15, 2022.
In its more than 100-page judgment, the Supreme Court said the Gujarat government was not the appropriate government to pass the remission order.
It clarified that the state in which an offender is tried and sentenced is competent to decide the remission plea of convicts. The convicts were tried in Maharashtra.
The top court had also nullified its May 13, 2022 order of another bench asking the Gujarat government to consider a remission plea of one of the convicts as the order was obtained by "playing fraud on the court" and by suppressing material facts.
With PTI inputs
