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Bilkis Bano plea against early release of 11 convicts adjourned as judge recuses
Justice Bela M Trivedi refused herself from hearing. The convicts had gangraped Bilkis Bano and murdered her family members during the 2002 Godhra riots.
A petition filed by Bilkis Bano challenging the early release of 11 men sentenced to life for her gang-rape and murder of seven family members was adjourned after one of the Supreme Court judges on the bench recused from hearing the matter.
A bench of justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi was to hear the matter on Tuesday, but Trivedi refused from the hearing. The same bench is currently seized of a bunch of public interest litigations (PILs) against the remission granted to the 11 rape-and-murder case convicts in the case.
The release of the convicts in August had triggered nationwide outrage. Bilkis Bano had moved the top court against the release on November 30. The 11 men were convicted in 2008 for raping her and killing seven of her family members, including her daughter, during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The bench, led by Justice Rastogi, was also taking note of a clutch of petitions filed against the August 10 order of the Gujarat government granting the benefit of remission to the 11 convicts under the 1992 policy. Bilkis Bano has also sought a review of the top court's May order under which the state government was told to consider the convicts' plea for premature release in accordance with the 1992 policy.
Even as the existing remission policy of 2014 (of the Gujarat government) prohibits the early release of rape convicts, no such restrictions existed in the 1992 policy.
In October, the Gujarat government had told the Supreme Court that the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA) approved the early release of 11 convicts sentenced to life in 2008. It had also cited the "good behaviour" of the convicts at the time.
The release had come months ahead of the assembly election in Gujarat.
Among those who had hit out at the government over the matter were the Congress's Rahul Gandhi, the leaders of the Trinamool Congress and the AIMIM's Asaduddin Owaisi.
