Justice Bela M Trivedi, Supreme Court judge, on Tuesday recused herself from hearing the plea filed by Bilkis Bano, challenging the pre-mature release of 11 convicts, who had gang-raped her and murdered her family members during the 2002 Godhra riots.
A bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi said the matter be posted before another bench. Besides filing a petition against the per-mature release of convicts, Bano has also filed a review petition seeking its earlier order by which it had asked the Gujarat government to consider the plea for the remission of one of the convicts.
The review petition was also listed for hearing today before Justice Rastogi in his chamber.
As per procedures, review pleas against top court judgements are decided in chambers by circulation by the judges who were part of the judgement under review.
She has filed a review plea against the May order of the Supreme Court which allowed the Gujarat government to apply the 1992 remission Rules.
Bilkis said that even being the victim of the crime, she had no clue about any such process of remission or premature release initiated.
Gujarat’s remission order is a mechanical order of remission by completely ignoring the law requirement as consistently laid down, the plea said.
Earlier, some PILs were filed seeking directions to revoke the remission granted to 11 convicts.
The pleas were filed by the National Federation of Indian Women, whose General
Gujarat government in its affidavit had defended remission granted to convicts saying they completed 14 years of sentence in prison and their “behaviour was found to be good”.
The State government said it has considered the cases of all 11 convicts as per the policy of 1992 and remission was granted on August 10, 2022, and the Central government also approved the ore-mature release of convicts.
