Bilkis Bano gangrape case: SC to deliver verdict on pleas challenging convicts' remission on January 8

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ALSO READ: Bilkis Bano Case: Supreme Court questions its own order During the post-Godhra riots in March 2002, 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.

In October last year, the Supreme Court had directed the Centre and Gujarat government to submit the original records related to the remission granted to 11 convicts, news agency ANI had reported. ALSO READ: Bilkis Bano case: SC questions parole to convicts, says ‘gravity of crime…’ A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan had then reserved its order on a batch of pleas filed against the remission granted to 11 convicts.

They also asked the government of Centre and Gujarat to submit original records by October 16. Bilkis Bano and others had approached the top court challenging the premature release of 11 convicts.

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 Secretary is Annie Raja, Member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Subhashini Ali, journalist Revati Laul, social activist and professor Roop Rekha Verma and TMC MP Mahua Moitra.

The pleas said they challenged the order of competent authority of the government of Gujarat by way of which 11 persons who were accused in a set of heinous offences committed in Gujarat were allowed to walk free on August 15, 2022, pursuant to remission being extended to them. During the hearing, advocate Shobha Gupta, appearing for Bilkis, was quoted by ANI as saying that punishment imposed on Bilkis' rapists ought to be proportional to the nature and