The Bilkis Bano case reeks of a convoluted application of the law where those who are tasked with upholding it have gone berserk. The case dates back to the Godhra riots of 2002 where the 21 year old and pregnant Bilkis Bano who tried to escape a mob was gang-raped while the head of her three year old daughter was smashed by the murderers. Other members of her family were murdered. Bilkis Bano was an eye-witness to all this horror. Eleven men were identified by Bilkis. They were convicted of rape and murder by the court in 2008. They have now been freed after 14 years in jail on the basis of an executive decree dating back to 1992 which grants remission to prisoners on the basis of good conduct inside the prison. This, when the order for such remission was already thrown out in 2014!
It is one thing to engage in hair-splitting arguments and quite another to ensure justice is done in a case as shocking as this. Bilkis Bano’s experience was horrendous and nerve-wracking for all those who know the details. In fact, it involved rape of several hapless women as also killing of many including children, at a besieged home in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning incident. The case was transferred to a Mumbai court which convicted the rapists.When the plea for remission of the life sentence of the accused reached the Supreme Court, it directed the Gujarat government to take a decision based on its Remission policy of 1992 that existed when the crime occurred in 2002. The state government now claims that it was a loosely drafted order – giving the BJP dispensation sufficient scope to act in favour of the convicts. It would look as if the government was simply waiting for this opportunity to hurriedly sit and decide on the matter. Note the fact that speed is normally not an attribute of our governments while responding to such matters.
Most glaringly, the Gujarat Government bared its saffron fangs. Its action is anti-woman, anti-minority and inhuman. Those who indulge in gang-rape and manslaughter do not deserve sympathy. While agreeing that courts have to go by the prescriptions in the rule book but situations like these would require them to look at matters from the humanitarian points of view as well. The justice dispensation system grants as much elbow room for them to hold forth. The message that this remission of sentence sends out to the wider world and to the minorities within the country is one of utter hopelessness.
