![]() | This article's lead section contains information that is not included elsewhere in the article.(July 2024) |
The Bilkis Bano case relates to an attack that took place in the 2002 Gujarat riots, in which a gang of 11 men gang raped a pregnant woman named Bilkis Bano and killed numerous members of her family. [1]
This section is missing information about Bilkis Bano, her gang rape and killing of her family members as well as the circumstances related to the 2002 Gujarat riots.(July 2024) |
After police dismissed the case against her assailants, Mrs. Bilkis Bano approached the National Human Rights Commission of India and petitioned the Supreme Court seeking a reinvestigation. The Supreme Court granted the motion, directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the investigation. CBI appointed a team of experts from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) Delhi and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) under the guidance and leadership of Professor T. D. Dogra to exhume the mass graves to establish the identity and cause of death of the victims. The team successfully located and exhumed the remains of the victims. [2]
The trial of the case was transferred out of Gujarat and into Maharashtra, and the central government was directed to appoint a public prosecutor. [3] [4] Charges were filed in a Mumbai court against nineteen people as well as six police officials and a government doctor over their role in the initial investigations. [5]
In January 2008, eleven men were sentenced to life imprisonment for rapes and murders and a policeman was convicted of falsifying evidence. [6] The Bombay High Court upheld the life imprisonment of the eleven men convicted for the gang rape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots on 8 May 2017. The court also set aside the acquittal of the remaining seven accused in the case, including Gujarat police officers and doctors of a government hospital, who were charged with suppressing and tampering with evidence. [7]
On 23 April 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat government to pay her ₹50 lakh as compensation, and to provide her with a government job and housing in the area of her choice. [8]
In March 2022, Radheshyam Bhagwandas Shah (one of the convicts) approached the SC seeking a remission of his sentence which would result in an early release. He claimed that the Gujarat State Government had an obligation to consider his early release as per the states’ 1992 remission policy. State governments may enact remission policies to allow individuals or certain classes of individuals to file applications for early release from prison. [9]
On 15 August 2022, the eleven men sentenced to life imprisonment in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case were released from a Godhra jail by the Gujarat government. [10] The judge who sentenced the rapists said the early release set a bad precedent by the Gujarat government and warned that the move would have wide ramifications. [11]
The panel which granted remission included two legislators from the BJP, which was the state government at that time, former BJP Godhra municipal councillor, and a BJP women wing member. [12] A BJP MLA, one of the panellists, has said that some of the convicts are "Brahmins" with good 'sanskaar' or values. [13] After being released from the jail, they were welcomed with sweets and their feet touched in respect. [14]
Two days after the remission, Bilkis Bano issued a statement expressing her grief at the release of her rapists, saying "The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice." [15] [16] Many Muslims from her village left their homes due to safety concerns. [17]
On 18 August 2022, around 6,000 signatories, including activists, eminent writers, historians, filmmakers, journalists and former bureaucrats, urged the Supreme Court to revoke the early release of the rapists, [18] while the Opposition parties criticised the BJP. [19] The convicts harassed the witnesses of the case when they were out on parole as recently as in the year 2021, which added to the criticism of the remission. [20]
A few days later, Supreme Court agreed to look into plea challenging release of 11 convicts. [21] A bench comprising Chief Justice of India N. V. Ramana, Justice Ajay Rastogi, and Justice Vikram Nath however posed a query with respect to the legal bar on grant of remission to the convicts. [22]
On 8 January 2024, Supreme Court of India has held that the Gujarat government was not competent to grant remission because the remission could only be granted by the government of the state where the trial was held, namely Maharashtra. [23] The Court struck down the remission granted, in August 2022, to the 11 men who had been sentenced to life imprisonment. The court ordered the men to surrender to the jail authorities within 15 days.
Bajrang Dal is a Hindu nationalist militant organisation that forms the youth wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). It is a member of the right-wing Sangh Parivar. The ideology of the organisation is based on Hindutva. It was founded on 1 October 1984 in Uttar Pradesh, and began spreading more in the 2010s throughout India, although its most significant base remains the northern and central portions of the country.
Teesta Setalvad is an Indian civil rights activist and journalist. She is the secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), an organisation formed to advocate for the victims of 2002 Gujarat riots.
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The Godhra train burning occurred on the morning of 27 February 2002: 59 Hindu pilgrims and karsevaks returning from Ayodhya were killed in a fire inside the Sabarmati Express near the Godhra railway station in the Indian state of Gujarat. The cause of the fire remains disputed. The Gujarat riots, in which Muslims were the targets of widespread and severe violence, occurred shortly afterward.
The 2002 Gujarat riots, also known as the 2002 Gujarat violence or the Gujarat pogrom, was a three-day period of inter-communal violence in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The burning of a train in Godhra on 27 February 2002, which caused the deaths of 58 Hindu pilgrims and karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, is cited as having instigated the violence. Following the initial riot incidents, there were further outbreaks of violence in Ahmedabad for three months; statewide, there were further outbreaks of violence against the minority Muslim population of Gujarat for the next year.
Babubhai Patel, known by his alias Babu Bajrangi, was a leader of the Gujarat-wing of the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu right wing organization in India. He was a central figure during the 2002 Gujarat violence. He was sentenced to life term imprisonment by a special court for his role in masterminding the Naroda Patiya massacre in which 97 Muslims were murdered including 36 women, 26 men and 35 children. The Supreme Court of India granted him bail on medical grounds in March 2019.
Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) is an Indian far-right Hindu organisation based on Hindu nationalism. The VHP was founded in 1964 by M. S. Golwalkar and S. S. Apte in collaboration with Swami Chinmayananda. Its stated objective is "to organise, consolidate the Hindu society and to serve and protect the Hindu Dharma". It was established to construct and renovate Hindu temples, and deal with matters of cow slaughter and religious conversion. The VHP is a member of the Sangh Parivar group, the family of Hindu nationalist organisations led by the RSS.
Maya Surendrakumar Kodnani is a former Minister of State for Women and Child Development in the Government of Gujarat. Kodnani joined the 12th legislative assembly of Gujarat after being elected to represent the constituency of Naroda as a candidate for the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Naroda Patiya massacre took place on 28 February 2002 at Naroda, in Ahmedabad, India, during the 2002 Gujarat riots. 97 Muslims were killed by a mob of approximately 5,000 people, organised by the Bajrang Dal, a wing of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, and allegedly supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party which was in power in the Gujarat State Government. The massacre at Naroda occurred during the bandh (strike) called by Vishwa Hindu Parishad a day after the Godhra train burning. The riot lasted over 10 hours, during which the mob plundered, stabbed, sexually assaulted, gang-raped and burnt people individually and in groups. After the conflict, a curfew was imposed in the state and Indian Army troops were called in to contain further violence.
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The 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, commonly known as the Nirbhaya case, involved a rape and fatal assault that occurred on 16 December 2012 in Munirka, a neighbourhood in South Delhi. The incident took place when Jyoti Singh, a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern, was beaten, gang-raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her male friend, Avnindra Pratap Pandey. There were six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman and beat her friend. She was rushed to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi for treatment and transferred to Singapore eleven days after the assault, where she succumbed to her injuries two days later. The incident generated widespread national and international coverage and was widely condemned, both in India and abroad. Subsequently, public protests against the state and central governments for failing to provide adequate security for women took place in New Delhi, where thousands of protesters clashed with security forces. Similar protests took place in major cities throughout the country. Since Indian law does not allow the press to publish a rape victim's name, the victim was widely known as Nirbhaya, meaning "fearless", and her struggle and death became a symbol of women's resistance to rape around the world.
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The 2013 Mumbai gang rape, also known as the Shakti Mills gang rape, refers to the incident in which a 22-year-old photojournalist, who was interning with an English-language magazine in Mumbai, was gang-raped by five people including a juvenile. The incident occurred on 22 August 2013, when she had gone to the deserted Shakti Mills compound, near Mahalaxmi in South Mumbai, with a male colleague on an assignment. The accused had tied up the victim's colleague with belts and raped her. The accused took photos of the victim during the sexual assault, and threatened to release them to social networks if she reported the rape. Later, an eighteen-year-old call centre employee reported that she too had been gang-raped, on 31 July 2013 inside the mills complex.
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Mridula Bhatkar is a former judge of the Bombay High Court, in Maharashtra, India, serving on the court between 2009 and 2019. She adjudicated in several notable cases during her tenure as a judge, including the Jalgaon rape case, the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, and the conviction of Gujarat police officers and doctors in the 2002 gangrape of Bilkis Bano.
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