The Supreme Court of India dismissed applications on Friday seeking to extend 11 convicts’ time to surrender to jail authorities in the Bilkis Bano case. The bench, comprising Justices B V Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan, did not find any merit in the applications. The convicts’ time to surrender expired on Saturday.
The court had agreed to entertain these applications on Thursday, which were mentioned before Nagarathna. As a result, Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud ordered the reconstitution of the bench that heard the case, in accordance with the Supreme Court Rules of 2013. The same bench was to hear the 11 convicts’ appeal to extend their time to surrender.
On January 8, in the same case, the court allowed the petition by Bilkis Bano against the premature release of the 11 convicts. All the convicts are charged with the gang-rape and murder of Bano family members. They were previously convicted in 2008. The bench quashed
the 11 convicts’ order of remission, passed by the Gujarat government in August 2022 that sought to reduce the original prison sentence.
The key question presented before the court through the January 8 petitions was whether the Gujarat government was competent to pass the order of remission. This was predicated on the finding that the Gujarat state government does not fall within the definition of the term, “appropriate government,” as used in section 432 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (India), which deals with the “power to suspend or remit sentences.”
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