Gujarat government’s decision to remit sentences of convicts in Bilkis Bano case flies in the face of  legal precedents

The remission is highly improper, arbitrary and capricious when the presiding judge of the Mumbai court which convicted the accused gave an opinion against their premature release. 

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What is the case about?

THE premature release of 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case by the Gujarat Government has sent shock waves across the country. Bilkis is a victim of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. She was 21 years old and pregnant when she was gang raped.  She lost all the members of her family in the communal carnage. Her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter was butchered to death before her eyes. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on the direction of the Supreme Court, investigated the matter, and the trial was held in Maharashtra on the directions of the Supreme Court to ensure impartial investigation and fair trial.

In 2008, the Mumbai Session court convicted the accused persons guilty of offence under Section 302, 376(2)(e)(g) read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and awarded them rigorous imprisonment for life and fine. In May 2017, a division bench of the Bombay High Court upheld the conviction and sentence awarded by the trial court. The findings recorded by the trial court as well as the Bombay High Court were also upheld by the Supreme Court.

Apparently, the convicts have served 15 years of imprisonment till now.

What prompted the premature release of the convicts by the state government?

Radheshyam Bhagwandas Shah alias Lala Vakil,  one of the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, in May 13 this year, approached the Supreme Court by filing a writ petition under Article 32, seeking direction to the Gujarat Government to consider his application for pre­mature release under the policy dated July 9, 1992, which was existing at the time of his conviction.

The petitioner did not mention that he was connected to the Gujarat riots. He projected the petition as if it was a case of remission, simpliciter. His grievance before the court was that his premature release should be considered as per the 1992 policy, and not the policy brought in by the state government in 2014. According to him, the 2014 policy prohibits remission to those whose cases had been investigated by the CBI, while there was no such prohibition in the 1992 policy.