Bilkis Bano case: Terming the decision of the Gujarat government ‘horrendously wrong’, as many as 134 former civil servants on Saturday wrote an open letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) against the premature release of the 11 men, who were serving life-term imprisonment in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape case.
According to a PTI report, former lieutenant governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung, former cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar, former foreign secretaries Shivshankar Menon and Sujatha Singh and former home secretary GK Pillai were among the 134 signatories to the letter.
“We write to you because we are deeply distressed by this decision of the government of Gujarat and because we believe that it is only the Supreme Court which has the prime jurisdiction, and hence the responsibility, to rectify this horrendously wrong decision,” the letter read.
They asked the CJI to rescind the order of remission passed by the Gujarat government and send the 11 persons convicted of gangrape and murder back to jail to serve out their life sentence. “Like the overwhelming majority of people in our country, we are aghast at what happened in Gujarat a few days ago, on the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence,” it said.
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The crime took place amidst the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. A five-month pregnant Bilkis Bano, who was around 19 years old then, was fleeing their village in Dahod district along with his family members. When they reached the outskirts of the Chhapparwad village Bilkis, her mother and three other women were raped and 14 of her family members, including her three-year-old daughter, were murdered. Owing to the political influence of the accused persons and given the sensitivity of the issue, the investigation was handed over to the CBI as per the directions of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court also shifted the trial to Maharashtra. In 2008, a sessions court in Mumbai sentenced the accused to life imprisonment.
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