| To go through the timeline of what has come to be known as the Bilkis Bano case is exhausting, distressing but also inspiring. Through 22 years, the now 43-year-old has never given up either on her fight for justice or her faith in the courts. Read on…(trigger warnings apply!) The Big Story The boundless courage of Bilkis Bano  (Source: HT) When violence broke out after the killing of 59 people aboard the Sabarmati Express at Godhra station on the morning of February 27, 2002, Bilkis Bano, then 21 years old and five months pregnant, knew she had to run. The killing of kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya had led the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to call for a bandh, the then chief minister Narendra Modi called the killing an act of terrorism and sporadic violence had already broken out in the state of Gujarat. Along with 16 other people, mostly women and children, Bilkis left Randhikpur village in Dahod district. One of the group, a cousin, had given birth just two days earlier. They were all headed towards Devgadh Baria town, hiding in the forest as they went. On March 3, the mob caught up with them, killing 14 people, including Bilkis’s 3-year-old daughter, her mother and her sister. Ignoring her pleas to spare her because she was pregnant, Bilkis was gang-raped by men she recognized as customers who had been buying milk from her family. When the men were done, they left her for dead. A two-decade struggle Incredibly, Bilkis survived. But her ordeal had only just begun. The next day at Limkheda police station, a first information report was registered, but the fact of the gang-rape and the identity of 12 men named by Bilkis were left out. Months went by with no arrests. In February 2003, a year after the crime, the police received court permission to close the case since they claimed the culprits could not be found. It was then that Bilkis approached the Supreme Court asking it to order the CBI to take over. The CBI filed a chargesheet in April 2004, naming 20 men including seven police officers and two doctors. In August that year, the Supreme Court also ordered the trial of the case to be moved out of Gujarat to Maharashtra. Nearly six years after the riots, in January 2008, a special judge convicted 11 men—Radheshyam Shah, Jaswant Chatur Nai, Keshu Vadaniya, Baka Vadaniya, Raji Soni, Ramesh Chauhan, Shailesh Bhatt, Bipin Chandra Joshi, Govind Nai, Mitesh Bhatt and Pradip Modhiya (two others died during trial)—and sentenced them to life imprisonment (the CBI had wanted the death sentence). The sentence was upheld by the Bombay high court in 2017. For the first time since that March day in 2002, Bilkis Bano finally cast her vote in an election. Through the years in court and outside, Bilkis has had to recount the horror she lived through, answering questions about being raped, witnessing the murder of her child and the rape and murder of other family members. “Each time I repeat it I can feel my pulse throb in my neck. It isn’t just pain but the fear that if I get one detail wrong their lawyers [the defence] will tear into me, accuse me of lying,” she told journalist Radhika Bordia. [Read Radhika Bordia’s 2023 interview with Bilkis Bano for Article-14 here.] She has reportedly moved house 20 times in as many years. But she has never wavered. In April 2019, the Supreme Court ordered compensation of Rs 50 lakh to Bilkis Bano and ordered the state government to provide employment and a house at a place of her choice. Her husband is reported to have said the money is being used to educate their children. The house and job never materialized. Judgement day  (Source: HT) The principle of remission is based on the idea that human beings are capable of reform. However, the state policy on remission excludes those convicted of heinous crimes like gang-rape and murder. Also excluded are those convicted by special CBI courts—unless the central government gives its express permission to do so. In May 2022, after serving 15 years of his sentence, one of the 11 convicts, Radheshyam Shah filed an appeal against an earlier Gujarat high court order asking him to seek permission for remission in Maharashtra, the state where he had been convicted. But Shah had also gone to the Supreme Court, conveniently omitting to tell justices Ajay Rastogi and Vikram Nath about the earlier Gujarat high court order asking him to go to Maharashtra. Instead, the Supreme Court asked the Gujarat government to consider Shah’s application in accordance with the government’s policy on remission. Then, as a shocked nation watched, on August 15, 2002 on India’s 75th Independence Day, Radheshyam Shah and the other convicts walked out of Godhra sub-jail, garlanded and feted with laddoos. Within a month of the release of her rapists and the murderers of her family, Bilkis Bano was back in the Supreme Court challenging their release. Separate public interest litigations were filed by other citizens. While Bilkis was represented in court by advocate Shobha Gupta, other human rights lawyers also stepped up pro bono. These included Indira Jaising, Vrinda Grover, Aparna Bhat, Nizamuddin Pasha, and Pratik R Bombarde. Finally, on January 8, a two-judge Supreme Court bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan junked the remission order, asked the men to return to jail within two weeks (reportedly Radheshyam Shah had begun practicing as a lawyer, to which Justice Bhuyan remarked, “I thought law is a noble profession)” and was scathing in its criticism of the Gujarat government for usurping and abusing its power. “I can breathe again,” a relieved Bilkis said in a statement released through her lawyer, Shobha Gupta. “This is what justice feels like.” Will the men go back to jail? In a case where disregard of the law, including dragging out the trial in the Supreme Court, has been blatant, nothing can be said for sure until they are back behind bars. Already, police in Dahod claim that nine of the 11 are ‘missing’. But you can be sure of one thing: Bilkis Bano will not give in without a fight. Read more:
>Retired police officer Meeran Chadha Borwankar: Why we fought.
>Indira Jaising: The Supreme Court reasserts its lost power
>In LiveLaw, Manu Sebastian: The Supreme Court walks the talk
> Supreme Court judgement in Bilkis Yakub Rasool v Union of India
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