Tue 18 October 2022:
The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the August release of 11 men convicted and sentenced to life in prison for gang-raping a Muslim woman and murdering members of her family during the 2002 Gujarat religious riots, according to court documents.
The approval letter from India’s home ministry, headed by Modi’s close aide Amit Shah, was uploaded on social media by legal site The Leaflet.
The release of the convicts in August and their subsequent felicitation by right-wing activists had caused outrage. But it was not clear at that time if the central government okayed their release.
WITNESSING MY RAPISTS GO FREE “HOW CAN JUSTICE FOR ANY WOMAN END LIKE THIS? BILKIS BANO
Bilkis Bano was just 21 when she was gang-raped by a mob and 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, were killed. Nearly 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in some of the worst religious violence in the country.
Days after her attackers were freed, Bilkis Bano issued a statement calling the decision to free the men “unjust” and said it had “shaken” her faith in justice.
“When I heard that the convicts who had devastated my family and life had walked free, I was bereft of words. I am still numb,” she said.
According to an affidavit submitted by the Gujarat government in the Supreme Court, the state said its decision to release the convicts was based on them spending 14 years in jail and their good behaviour during their time in prison.
The top court had asked the state government to share documents regarding the remission granted to the rapists following multiple pleas filed against their release.
ELEVEN CONVICTS IN GUJARAT GANG RAPE, MURDER CASES FREED IN INDIA
The 11 men were jailed in 2008 for life in the gang rape and murder case. Fourteen members of Bano’s family were also killed in the violence, including her three-year-old daughter whose head was smashed on the ground by perpetrators in Limkheda, in Gujarat’s Dahod district.
The convicts were released in August, coinciding with 75 years of India’s independence.
#Breaking: Gujarat Government tells the #SupremeCourt that its decision to release the convicts who gang-raped Bilkis Bano had the approval of the Union Home Ministry. pic.twitter.com/nWe0KNOQTA
— The Leaflet (@TheLeaflet_in) October 17, 2022
‘Hindu-supremacist commitment’
Dozens of protesters took to the streets in Delhi, demonstrating against the release of the convicts, while opposition leaders panned the BJP for undermining the rights of women and harbouring a bias towards Muslims.
“Talk of respect for women from the ramparts of the Red Fort but in reality support for ‘rapists’,” Gandhi tweeted in Hindi.
“Bilkis Bano’s rape and the massacre of her family members occurred as part of an anti-Muslim pogrom on Modi’s watch as Gujarat chief minister in 2002,” Kavita Krishnan, women’s rights activist, told Al Jazeera.
“By releasing the convicted rapists and killers early, Modi as prime minister is signalling his Hindu-supremacist commitment to Hindu voters in Gujarat on the eve of impending state polls.
“This action belies the Modi government’s claims of rescuing Muslim women from patriarchal practices [which Modi’s party implies are a unique feature of Islam],” she said.
“How can justice for a woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land,” she said, adding that no authorities reached out to her before making the decision.
“Please undo this harm. Give me back my right to live without fear and in peace.”
The 2002 riots have been a thorn in Modi’s side – he was Gujarat’s top elected official at the time – amid allegations that authorities allowed and even encouraged the bloodshed.
Modi has repeatedly denied having any role and the Supreme Court has said it found no evidence to prosecute him.
Ignored her pleas for mercy
Bilkis Bano – then 19 and pregnant with her second child – was visiting her parents in a village called Randhikpur near Godhra with her three-year-old daughter.
“I was in the kitchen making lunch, when my aunt and her children came running. They said their homes were being set on fire and we had to leave immediately,” she told me. “We left with just the clothes we were wearing, we didn’t even have the time to put on our slippers.”
Bilkis Bano was in a group of 17 Muslims that included her daughter, her mother, a pregnant cousin, her younger siblings, nieces and nephews, and two adult men.
Over the next few days, they travelled from village to village, seeking shelter in mosques or subsisting on the kindness of Hindu neighbours.
On the morning of 3 March, as they set out to go to a nearby village where they believed they would be safer, a group of men stopped them.
“They attacked us with swords and sticks. One of them snatched my daughter from my lap and threw her on the ground, bashing her head into a rock.”
Her attackers were her neighbours in the village, men she had seen almost daily while growing up. They tore off her clothes and several of them raped her, ignoring her pleas for mercy.
Her cousin, who had delivered a baby two days earlier while they were on the run, was raped and murdered and her newborn was killed.
Bilkis Bano survived because she lost consciousness and her attackers left, believing she was dead. Two boys – seven and four – were the only other survivors of the massacre.
NEWS AGENCIES
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:
TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent
FACEBOOK (CLICK HERE)
https://web.facebook.com/ipindependent
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
