The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will examine an early listing of a petition filed by a victim (Bilkis Bano) seeking a review of its previous ruling in which it urged the Gujarat government to consider the petition for remission of 11 prisoners in the Bilkis Bano gang rape case.
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and Dipankar Datta said, “It will come up by circulation. I will have it posted early. There is a date, I will check.” The apex court said this after advocate Shobha Gupta told the bench that the review plea is yet to be listed and a tentative date was shown as December 5.
According to procedure, review petitions against top court decisions are decided in chambers by the justices who were involved in the decision under review.
She has filed a review petition against the Supreme Court’s May judgement allowing the Gujarat government to implement the 1992 remission Rules.
Bano filed a review petition as well as a plea contesting the premature release of 11 convicts who gang raped her and murdered her family members during the Godhra riots in 2002.
The case is scheduled to be heard on December 13 before a bench consisting of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela Trivedi.
Bano said that even being the victim of the crime, she had no clue about any such process of remission or premature release initiated.
Gujarat’s remission order is a mechanical order of remission by completely ignoring the law required as consistently laid down, the plea said.
Earlier, 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.
Gujarat government in its affidavit had defended remission granted to convicts saying they completed 14 years of sentence in prison and their “behaviour was found to be good”.
