New Delhi: There is “no error apparent on the face of the record” warranting reconsideration of its judgment castigating the Gujarat government for granting remission to those accused of gang raping Bilkis Bano in 2002, the Supreme Court has said.
While undoing the remission granted by the Gujarat government in August 2022 to 11 convicts sentenced to life for gang raping a pregnant Bano, the Supreme Court in January said the state government had ‘usurped power’ in granting them premature release.
It also said the government “acted in tandem” and “was complicit” with one of the convicts in his seeking remission by suppressing facts before the apex court.
Gujarat’s government filed a review petition before the court, arguing that some of its comments in the judgment were “not only highly unwarranted and against the record of the case, but has caused serious prejudice to the state”, per the Indian Express.
However, the court dismissed the Gujarat government’s review petition on Thursday (September 26).
“Having carefully gone through the review petitions, the order under challenge and the papers annexed therewith, we are satisfied that there is no error apparent on the face of the record or any merit in the review petition, warranting reconsideration of the order impugned,” a bench comprising Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said.
The 11 convicts were also convicted of gang raping members of Bano’s family as well as murdering at least 14 of them during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
They were released early in August 2022 by Gujarat, but the Supreme Court ordered they go back to prison, saying it was the Maharashtra government and not the Gujarat government that had the power to grant them remission.
Gujarat had ‘usurped’ Maharashtra’s power in granting them remission, the top court said.
The government’s ‘complicity’ with one of the accused was “exactly what this court had apprehended at the previous stages of this case” and led it to transfer the trial to Maharashtra, the court also said.
In fact, it was a bench of the Supreme Court itself that said in May 2022 that the Gujarat government was the “appropriate government” to consider remission for one of the convicts.
But in January it nullified this order, saying it had been “obtained by fraud”.
According to the Supreme Court in January, the convict Radheshyam Shah approached it for relief seeking remission but did not mention among other things that he had unsuccessfully approached Maharashtra after the Gujarat high court denied him remission in 2019.
This amounted to “misrepresenting and suppressing relevant facts” and “playing fraud on this court”, the apex court had said in January.
The court also said the Gujarat government could have filed a review petition in 2022 pointing out that it was not the “appropriate government” and that if it had done so, the “ensuing litigation would not have arisen at all”.
The state government challenged this, saying though it did not file a review petition, it had “consistently submitted” before the court that it was not the appropriate government, the Express cited it as saying.
It also said the court’s observation that it acted in tandem with Shah was an “extreme observation” and that the court’s saying it had usurped power was “an error apparent on the face of the record”.
