Explained | The remission laws that paved the way for release of the Bilkis Bano case convicts

Why did the Gujarat government release all 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case? What is the difference between the old policy of 1992 and the present policy of 2014?

The story so far: As India celebrated the 75th anniversary of Independence on Monday, 11 men sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang rape of Bilkis Yakub Rasool and the murder of seven of her family members during the 2022 Gujarat riots were released from jail in Godhra. As the 11 convicts, who walked out of the prison after 15 years, were welcomed with sweets and garlands, the Gujarat government said it relied on its old remission policy of 1992 to approve their applications for remission of the sentence and not the current policy of 2014.

While the release of the 11 convicted men caused widespread controversy, it brought back traumatic memories for Bilkis Bano and her family. In a statement to the media, released by her advocate on August 17, Bilkis asked “…how can justice for any woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land. I trusted the system, and I was learning slowly to live with my trauma. She urged the Gujarat government to “undo the harm”.

Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was brutally gang-raped during her attempt to flee along with her relatives in the violence that broke out during the post-Godhra communal riots in Gujarat. The mob that attacked the group killed her three-year-old daughter, Saleha, and 14 other members of her family, maintains Bilkis Bano.

Violence had broken out in Gujarat in the aftermath of the Sabarmati Express train burning incident at Godhra on February 27, 2002 amidst an already communally charged atmosphere. Fifty-nine people were charred to death after a mob torched one of the coaches returning from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad with a large number of ‘kar sevaks’ of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). 

In his book ‘ Between Memory and Forgetting: Massacre and the Modi Years in Gujarat’, author Harsh Mander narrates the horror. The family was moving in a truck to a village, but before they could reach their destination, a mob of 20-30 people attacked them. The men snatched the three-year-old from Bilkis, and smashed her head to the ground. With her daughter dead, three men, all from her village and people she knew, took turns to rape a pregnant Bilkis. “In the mayhem around her, the 14 members of her family were raped, molested, and hacked to death by the mob,” the author notes. Taking her for dead, the assailants left her naked and unconscious. However, Bilkis Bano lived to retell the horror. 

Bilkis regained consciousness hours later and that was the beginning of a longstruggle for justice and dignity. The state machinery reportedly worked against her as she tried to get the local police to file her complaint. Even after an FIR was filed, it allegedly omitted crucial details.

Bilkis Bano approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and moved the Supreme Court. In December 2003, the SC ordered a CBI probe into the case. A month later, all accused were arrested and the trial began. In August 2004, the trial was moved to Mumbai at the instance of the SC after Bilkis Bano told the court that her family was living in the shadow of danger and uncertainty.