Bilkis Bano case: SC strikes down Gujarat government’s remission order of 11 convicts, demands their surrender

The Gujarat government’s order to remit 11 convicts who had gangraped Bilkis Bano and killed her family members during the 2002 Godhra riots was overturned by the Supreme Court on Monday. Judges BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan’s bench overturned the Gujarat government’s remission order, which had allowed convicts to be released early.

It asked all 11 convicts to surrender before jail authorities within two weeks.
The bench held that the Gujarat government was not competent to pass the remission orders but the Maharashtra government. It said the appropriate government to decide the remission was the state within whose territorial limits the accused are sentenced, not where the crime is committed or the accused are imprisoned.
The top court held that the judgement of May 13, 2022, by which another bench of the apex court had directed the Gujarat government to consider remission of convicts as per the 1992 policy, was obtained by “playing fraud” on the court and by suppressing material facts.

The bench declared that the Gujarat government had usurped the Maharashtra government’s authority in order to implement the May 13, 2022 ruling, which they considered to be a “nullity.” The bench stated that the convicts had not come before the court with clean hands and that the reason this court was being cheated on was because of the “suppression of facts” during the proceedings. Since the Gujarat government was not the proper government, the top court questioned why it had not submitted an application to have the May 13, 2022, order reviewed. The Supreme Court declared that this case was a classic example of how its order has been used to circumvent the law in order to grant remission.