The Supreme Court has given its verdict in the case of premature release of the convicts of Bilkis Bano. The Supreme Court has canceled the release of all 11 convicts.
A bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjwal Bhuyan directed the convicts to surrender before the jail authorities within two weeks. That means all the culprits will have to go to jail once again.
Maharashtra government, not Gujarat, had to take the decision: SC
The Supreme Court said in its decision that the Gujarat government was not a competent state to give a decision regarding the release of the culprits, this decision had to be taken by the Maharashtra government.
The Supreme Court said that the Gujarat government should have filed a review petition on the decision of the Supreme Court in May 2022. The Gujarat government took away the powers of the Maharashtra government by carrying forward the decision of May 13, 2022, which is invalid in our opinion.
The Supreme Court said that Bilkis Bano’s petition challenging the decision of the Gujarat government is worthy of hearing.
The Supreme Court also termed as ‘invalid’ the May 13, 2022 order of another bench, which had asked the Gujarat government to consider the convicts’ plea for remission of sentence as it was ‘fraudulent to the court’ and misrepresenting the facts.
