The Supreme Court of India refused to extend the time for surrender to the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case. The court held that the reasons cited in their application do not prevent them from complying with the January 8 order to surrender in two weeks.
The convicts will now have to surrender by Sunday.
All 11 convicts in the case of gangrape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 riots in Gujarat moved the Supreme Court on Thursday requesting more time to surrender before jail authorities.
The convicts have sought an extension of time due to ‘ill health’, ‘harvest of winter crops’, and ‘son’s marriage’, Bar and Bench reported.
The matter seeking an extension of time was mentioned before a bench of Justices B V Nagarathana and Sanjay Karol on Thursday which asked the Registry to place the plea before CJI.
This came after the Supreme Court of India last week quashed the Gujarat government’s decision, taken in August 2022, to prematurely release 11 convicts facing life terms. It ordered all the convicts, who were released prematurely on Independence Day in 2022, back to jail within two weeks.
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.
The 11 convicts released prematurely were: Bakabhai Vohania, Bipin Chandra Joshi, Kesarbhai Vohania, Govind Nai, Jaswant Nai, Mitesh Bhatt, Pradeep Mordhiya, Radheshyam Shah, Rajubhai Soni, Ramesh Chandana and Shailesh Bhatt.
Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped while 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.
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Published: 19 Jan 2024, 01:08 PM IST