No Justice to Rape Victim Bilkis Bano

She was pregnant and was gang raped,14 members of her family brutally murdered, But, No Death Penalty For Convicts, Says Bombay High Court

MUMBAI:  

HIGHLIGHTS

Bilkis Bano gang-raped during Gujarat riots; she was 19 and pregnant, 14 of her family members, including her daughter, were murdered CBI had sought death penalty for three out of 11 convicted in the case The Bombay High Court has turned down the CBI's request for the death penalty to three men accused of gangraping Bilkis Bano, a 19-year-old pregnant woman, and brutally murdering 14 members of her family, including her three-old daughter, in Randhikpur near Ahmedabad, during the Gujarat riots of 2002.  

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had told court that this was a "rarest of rare case" and that the death penalty must be awarded to three out of 11 people convicted in the case, to send out a "stern message." A trial court in Mumbai had sentenced all of them to life imprisonment, which the High Court upheld today.   

The High Court has, however, accepted the CBI's other plea to reverse the acquittal of five Gujarat police officers and two doctors in the case.  The agency has alleged that the policemen connived with the convicts by "fudging documents and compromising the inquest panchnama." A total of 19 people were convicted by the court today.

The CBI had sought the death penalty for Jaswant Nai, Govind Nai, and Sailesh Bhatt , saying there was direct evidence that they brutally gangraped Bilkis, who was five months pregnant, and her sister and her mother. Sailesh Bhatt also allegedly snatched Bilkis' three-year-old daughter from her and crushed her head on a stone. The child died on the spot.

Bilkis's mother and sister were among the 14 of her family and 17 people from the village killed by the rioters on March 3, 2002.  Bilkis Bano, who lives in central Gujarat with her husband, had identified her rapists.

The trial was transferred out of Gujarat for the fear that witnesses might be intimidated or influenced.

The trial court had in January 2008, convicted 12 people, sentencing them to life imprisonment. They had all appealed against their conviction in the High Court. One of them has since died.

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How Pragya Singh Thakur, Sunil Joshi And Swami Aseemanand Plotted The Samjhauta Express Blasts

On 24 April 2017, the Bombay High Court granted bail to Pragya Singh Thakur, a former national executive member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, in the 2008 Malegaon blasts case. On 29 September 2008, two bombs concealed in a motorcycle had exploded in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in Maharashtra. Four persons were killed in the blast and 79 others injured. The investigation into the blasts was initially conducted by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which filed its chargesheet in January 2009. In it, the ATS named 14 persons, including Thakur. She was arrested in October 2008. The ATS alleged that Thakur was one of the masterminds behind the blast. It stated that she owned the bike associated with the blast, and had given it to a co-accused Ramchandra Kalsangra, who planted the bomb and placed it at the blast site. The evidence the ATS presented against Thakur included statements from witnesses and co-accused, which placed her at meetings planning the blasts before its execution.

In April 2011, the home ministry transferred the case to the National Investigation Agency. Five years later, in 2016, the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet in which it called the ATS investigation “dubious” and dropped Thakur and five others from the list of accused persons, claiming that “sufficient evidence have not been found” against them. The NIA chargesheet stated the ATS had tortured a witness who made a statement indicting Thakur. Another witness, RP Singh, who had earlier told the ATS that he overheard Thakur showing her readiness to provide men to arrange the blast, retracted his statement. On these grounds, and arguing the bike used in the blast was not in her possession, the NIA issued a clean chit to Thakur. One month after the NIA’s supplementary chargesheet was filed, an NIA court rejected a bail application filed by Thakur, in June 2016, stating that prima facie charges were still made out against her. Thakur filed an appeal against the order dismissing bail before the Bombay High Court. While granting her bail, the court said: “It cannot be said that there are reasonable grounds for believing that accusation made against her are prima facie true.” 

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