New Delhi: The Supreme Court has agreed to list the petitions filed by three convicts in the Bilkis Bano case who have asked for more time to surrender. The petitions come over a week after the 11 men were ordered back to jail after the Supreme Court cancelled the order that granted them early release.
Senior lawyer V Chitambaresh sought an early hearing in the petition, saying that the three men only had three days before they had to surrender on January 21. Justice BV Nagarathna directed the registry to seek orders from Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud to constitute a bench with Justice Ujjal Bhuiyan to hear the petitions soon.
In their petitions, the three men cited reasons ranging from family weddings and dependent parents to the harvest season for requesting more time. In a landmark verdict on January 8, the Supreme Court canceled the Gujarat government’s decision to grant remission to the 11 men who gang-raped Bilkis Bano and murdered seven members of her family, including her three-year old daughter, during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The judges also directed the convicts, who were released on Independence Day in 2022, to surrender by January 22.
Convict Govindbhai Nai has asked for four more weeks and Ramesh Chandana and Mitesh Bhatt have sought six more weeks to turn themselves in.
21-year-old Bilkis Bano was pregnant when she and her family were attacked by a mob during the 2002 riots. She and two of her children were the only survivors of that attack. The men who gang-raped her and killed her family were accorded a hero’s welcome upon their release by the Gujarat government.
