Justice Bela Trivedi recuses set from hearing Bilkis Bano murder case

New Delhi, Jan 04: Supreme Court judge, Justice Bela Trivedi recused herself from hearing the pleas challenging the pre-mature release of the 11 convicts, who had gang-raped Bilkis Bano and also murdered her family members in 2002.

A Bench comprising Justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi ordered that the the matter be placed before a Bench of which Justice Trivedi is not a part of.

After Justice Trivedi recused herself from the hearing, Justice Rastogi said that the court cannot pass the order to tag the PILs with the one filed by Bilkis Bano.

Since my sister (Justice Trivedi) wants to recuse, we cannot pass a tagging order. Now that the victim is here, we will take the victim's matter as a lead matter. List before the Bench where Justice Trivedi is not a member. The Bench also said that all matters will be tagged when the Bench will sit in a different combination.

The counsel for the convicts questioned the locus standi of the petitioners who filed the PILs against the remissions granted to the eleven convicts. To this the Bench said once there is a plea by the victim the point of locus is gone.

Earlier Justice Trivedi had recused herself from hearing a plea filed by Bilkis Bano against the remissions granted to the convicts.

Bano apart from filing a petition questioning the pre-mature release of the convicts had also filed a review petition seeking review of an earlier order by which it had asked the Gujarat government to consider the plea for the remission of one of the convicts.

The review petition has been dismissed.

Some of the PILs were filed seeking directions to revoke the remission granted to the 11 convicts.

The pleas were filed by the National Federation of Indian Women, whose General Secretary is Annie Raja, Member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Subhashini Ali, journalist Revati Laul, social activist and professor Roop Rekha Verma and TMC MP Mahua Moitra.

The Gujarat government in affidavit had justified the remission granted to the convicts and said that they had completed 14 years of sentence in prison and their behaviour was found to be good.

The government said that it considered the case of the eleven convicts as per the policy of 1992 and remission was granted on August 10 2022. The Centre too had approved the same, the affidavit read.

"State government considered all the opinions and decided to release 11 prisoners since they have completed 14 years and above in prisons and their behaviour was found to be good," the affidavit also read.