Bilkis convicts’ release case reaches top court
Hindustan TimesThe Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider urgently hearing a petition demanding the immediate re-arrest of 11 convicts, who were sentenced in 2008 to a life term for the Bilkis Bano gang-rape and murder of seven members of the survivor’s family, but walked out of jail last week after the Gujarat government cleared their early release under the state’s 1992 remission policy. “We will look into the matter and list it,” Chief Justice of India NV Ramana told senior counsel Kapil Sibal and advocate Aparna Bhat, who sought hearing of the plea that challenges the validity of the Gujarat government’s decision and exercise of discretion in favour of convicts in a “gruesome” and “heinous” case. In Union of India Vs Sriharan @ Murugan & Ors, the Supreme Court ruled that “the opinion of the central government must have a decisive status” in cases investigated and prosecuted by CBI. Citing the “gruesome” facts recorded by the trial court and the Bombay high court while sentencing the convicts, the plea said that “it would be entirely against public interest and would shock the collective public conscience, as also be entirely against the interests of the victim to grant remission in such a case.” It added that in a case of such a grave nature, no right-thinking authority, under any extant policy, could consider it fit to grant remission to the convicts.