Bilkis Bano case: 11 convicts surrender at Godhra sub-jail, confirm officials

Days after the Supreme Court dismissed convict applications for a surrender deadline extension, this development unfolds.

Godhra: All the elevan convcits in the Bilkis Bano case surrendered on late Sunday night at Godhra sub-jail in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district, as per the deadline set up by the Supreme Court, officials said.

“11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case surrendered at Godhra sub-jail in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district last night,” said the officials at Central Jail, Godhra.

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The development comes days after the Supreme Court on Friday dismissed the applications filed by convicts in the case seeking an extension of time to surrender before jail authorities.

The convicts were granted remission by the Gujarat government in the gangrape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family members during the 2002 Godhra riots.

They were sentenced to life imprisonment but released in August 2022 after serving 14 years of sentence.

On January 8, the Supreme Court struck down the Gujarat government’s order granting remission to 11 convicts.

It had quashed the Gujarat government’s remission order, by which convicts were released pre-maturely, and asked them to surrender before jail authorities within two weeks.

The bench had held that the Gujarat government was not competent to pass the remission orders but the Maharashtra government.

The judgement of the top court had come on a petition filed by Bilkis Bano and others challenging the premature release of 11 convicts.

Earlier, the Gujarat government, in its affidavit, defended the remission granted to convicts, saying they had completed a 14-year sentence in prison and their “behaviour was found to be good.”

In March 2002 during the post-Godhra riots, Bano was allegedly gang-raped and left to die with 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter. She was five months pregnant when rioters attacked her family in Vadodara.