Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 13: Justice Bela M. Trivedi of the Supreme Court on Tuesday withdrew from hearing Bilkis Bano’s petition before the court, which was filed in response to the Gujarat government’s decision to commute the sentences of 11 prisoners who had gang-raped and killed her family members during the 2002 Godhra riots and filed the petition.
When Justice Bela Trivedi made the decision to recuse herself from the case, the issue was heard by a bench comprising Justices Ajay Rastogi and Trivedi.
In the wake of the 2002 riots, Bano was gang-raped, and her three-year-old daughter was one of twelve persons who were murdered by a mob in the Gujarati district of Dahod’s Limkheda taluka.
The Supreme Court declared on May 13 that the policy in effect at the time of the conviction in the State where the crime was actually committed should be taken into account while remitting the convictions of the case’s convicts.
The Supreme Court was deliberating a petition that one of the inmates, Radheshyam Bhagwandas Shah @ Lala Vakil, filed asking the State of Gujarat to examine his request for early release under a policy that was in effect at the time of his conviction and was dated July 9, 1992.
The petitioner was serving rigorous imprisonment for life after being found guilty of offences under Sections 302, 376(2)(e)(g) read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
He had requested early release under Sections 433 and 433A of the Criminal Procedure Code, claiming that he had already served more than 15 years and 4 months in prison.
But his petition, which he had filed with the Gujarat High Court, was eventually dismissed on the grounds that the motion for early release should have been made in Maharashtra rather than Gujarat because the trial had already been completed there.
