The plight of Bilkis Bano is just the tip of an ice berg, where judicial relief, for a pregnant nineteen-year-old mother of a baby, along with fourteen people among them her own mother was also there, trying to escape from demonic lust of eleven men, whom all the women as well as Bilkis knew from childhood. Infant daughter of Bilkis, refusing to leave her mother’s arms, was tortured and struck with stones that opened her skull killing her, and left Bilkis unconscious. The men pounced upon each of them, and one among them was Bilkis. Each of the women was killed, except Bilkis who they thought was dead. After hours she opened her eyes, not even registering the horror around her that left all her dear ones dead. It was a tribal village she had managed to reach where they gave her clothes and water. Later police vehicle brought her to a police station where the FIR she got registered did not have words like rape or murder. Judiciary took time to wake up and that too after the launching of a strenuous struggle to deliver justice to Bilkis Bano.

The crime, if not unprecedented, was surely heinous and there was a wide ranging response to it. All over the country, popular protests were unleashed that led to CBI directing an inquiry. The Supreme Court in December of the following year initiated the judicial process. In January 2008, after six long years, justice was served as a special court convicted 11 men, sentencing them to life imprisonment, which meant incarceration for as long as they lived. The convicted started to appeal. They wanted to go back to their daily lives, with no scar on their conscience. Wanted to live with their families, love their children and forget shrieks of the suffering ones dying in their hands, including the daughter of Bilkis. It was three generations of women and men from all ages, that they had slaughtered in just a few hours.

It was on Independence Day, 2022, when the eleven convicts got released following the Gujarat government’s remission policy that was valid at the time of the crime and conviction. Without waiting for any help, immediately Bilkis responded with a writ petition challenging the court’s order, expressing that the release had “shaken the conscience of society”.

On this, Supreme Court acted and overturned the release order, stating that the order in its totality was given without proper “application of mind”. The apex court directed all convicts to surrender to jail authorities within two weeks.

Whatever had happened in 2002 in Ahmedabad, Baroda and other towns of Gujarat was in one word, ‘Sacrilege’. The attempt to annihilation of one entire community at the hands of another, powered with the strength of majority. The entire process, as they were caught and arrested, when those promoting the crime, were freed, felicitated after their premature release has now ended with the Court directing them to return to prison within two weeks.

It was a verdict based on the rationale that Gujarat did not have any jurisdiction to decide on granting remission to convicts sentenced in Maharashtra. The Bench, comprising Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan, said: “the State of Gujarat has acted in tandem and was complicit” in one of the convicts’ petition for a direction to the State government to grant remission of the remainder of his life term based on a defunct 1992 policy. It has noted that the Gujarat government — which took the correct stand during earlier proceedings that only the government of Maharashtra, where the trial and sentencing took place, was the appropriate government to consider remission — had failed to seek review of a two-Bench judgment’s order in May 2022, even though it was wrongly decided based on suppression of material facts. In citing the Court direction as the reason for it to pass orders in favour of the convicts, the State government was guilty of usurpation of power, the Bench said.

"This is what justice feels like. I thank the honourable Supreme Court of India for giving me, my children and women everywhere, this vindication and hope in the promise of equal justice for all," she said.

"A year and half ago, on August 15, 2022, when those who had destroyed my family and terrorised my very existence, were given an early release, I simply collapsed," she said. To those who stood with her during that period, "my gratitude for your precious solidarity and strength," she said. "You gave me the will to struggle, to rescue the idea of justice not just for me, but for every woman in India. I thank you," Bilkis Bano said.

"It was as if a decision was made first and process applied later, and if i dare say, unmindfully," remarked Shobha Gupta, who has been Bilkis Bano's legal counsel for decades. She also questioned the "good behaviour" of the men that was cited for their release. "What was the reflection of the good behaviour? Nothing was reflecting," she said.

The reflection was a pointer towards the restoration of faith in the judiciary, also an attempt to remit the doubts about the institution’s capacity to hold power to account. (IPA Service)