After spending 16 days in jail post surrender on January 21, a convict in Bilkis Bano’s gang rape case was granted Parole from the Gujarat High Court due to the death of his father-in-law.
Following a 16-day confinement subsequent to his surrender on January 21st, an offender implicated in the gang violation against Bilkis Bano was accorded temporary leave by the Gujarat High Court for a period of five days owing to the demise of his father-in-law.
In accordance with directives from the Supreme Court, the eleven perpetrators involved in the Bilkis Bano incident surrendered themselves at the Godhra penitentiary during the nocturnal hours of January 21st.
The offender, Pradipbhai Ramamlal Modiya, had presented a death certificate to the high court, petitioning for a thirty-day respite. Nonetheless, the high court only sanctioned a five-day reprieve.
Justice MR Mengdey of the Gujarat High Court granted Modiya temporary leave subsequent to scrutinizing the death certificate and the testimony provided by the prison official.
Previously, on January 19th, the Supreme Court dismissed applications submitted by all eleven convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, seeking an extension of time to surrender to correctional authorities.
On January 8th, the apex court nullified the remission granted to the eleven convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape case and overturned its May 2022 ruling, which had instructed the Gujarat Government to review the remission requests of the convicts. The court deemed the judgment not only “legally flawed” but also procured through “deception,” as one of the petitioners (also a convict) had concealed vital information and made deceptive assertions. The court instructed all eleven convicts to report back to the relevant correctional authorities within a fortnight.
Furthermore, the court asserted that the writ petition challenging the authority of the Gujarat government to grant remission was admissible, as the state of Gujarat encroached upon the jurisdiction of the state of Maharashtra while granting remission.
Bilkis Bano Rasool was twenty-one years old and five months pregnant when she fell victim to gang-rape during the communal unrest in Gujarat in 2002. Seven members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, perished in the violence.
In 2008, a special court in Mumbai sentenced all eleven convicts to life imprisonment, a ruling that was upheld by a division bench of the Bombay High Court in 2017.