The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea filed by 11 convicts in the gangrape case of Bilkis Bano and the murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 riots in Gujarat seeking an extension of time to surrender. The top court had asked the convicts to surrender before jail authorities by January 21.
A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said the reasons cited by the convicts have no merits.
“We have heard senior counsel and counsel for the applicants and the counsel for the non-applicants also. The reasons cited by applicants to seek postponement of surrender and report back to jail have no merit in as much as those reasons in no way prevent them from complying with our directions. Hence the miscellaneous applications are dismissed,” the bench said.
The top court on January 8 had quashed the Gujarat government’s decision to grant remission to 11 convicts in the case, saying the orders were “stereotyped” and passed without application of mind.
In its 251-page judgment, the Supreme Court said the Gujarat government had no jurisdiction to entertain the applications for remission of sentences and only the government of the state where the offenders were sentenced was competent to consider an application for remission and pass an order.
Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gangraped while she along with her family was trying to escape 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.
(With inputs from PTI)
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