New Delhi, September 26: The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a review petition of the Gujarat government seeking to expunge certain remarks made against the government for its conduct concerning the premature release of the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case.
"We are satisfied that there is no error apparent on the face of the record or any merit in the review petitions, warranting reconsideration of the order impugned. The review petitions are, accordingly, dismissed," said a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan in its order.
The state had filed a review petition in the top court saying that the adverse remarks made against the government in the top court's judgement had caused great prejudice to the state government.
The Gujarat government had sought to delete adverse remarks against the state. It had further argued that the state government had only acted as per the mandamus issued by the Supreme Court by way of its judgement of May 2022.
The Gujarat government was acting as per the Supreme Court's May 2022 judgement, which directed it to consider the remission application of one of the convicts, as it had said in the review plea.
The state had submitted that it cannot be held to have "usurped" the jurisdiction of the State of Maharashtra when it was acting as per a direction of the Supreme Court.
On January 8, 2024, the Supreme Court struck down the Gujarat government order granting remission to 11 convicts who had gang-raped Bilkis Bano and murdered her family members during the 2002 Godhra riots.
The top court had held that the Gujarat government was not competent to pass the remission orders but the Maharashtra government. It had said the appropriate government to decide the remission was the state (in this case, Maharashtra) within whose territorial limits the accused are sentenced and not where the crime is committed or the accused are imprisoned.
The Gujarat government released the 11 convicts, who were sentenced to life imprisonment, on August 15, 2022. All the 11 life-term convicts in the case were released as per the remission policy prevalent in Gujarat at the time of their conviction in 2008. Supreme Court Gujarat Government Bilkis Bano case post-Godhra riots Vadodara.
In March 2002, during the post-Godhra riots, Bano was allegedly gang-raped and left to die with 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter. She was five months pregnant when rioters attacked her family in Vadodara.
