Bilkis Bano case: Gujarat High Court grants 10-day parole to convict for nephew’s marriage

The Gujarat High Court on Friday granted parole for ten days to Ramesh Chandana, one of the 11 men convicted in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case, to attend his nephew’s wedding, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice Divyesh Joshi, while granting parole to Chandana, directed him to furnish a bail bond of Rs 5,000.

This was the second instance of a convict in the case getting parole this month. On February 5, the High Court granted parole to another convict – Pradip Modhiya – after his father-in-law died.

The convicts surrendered at the Godhra sub-jail in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district on January 21 in line with a January 8 Supreme Court order that had quashed the remission granted to them.

The men were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for gangraping Bilkis Bano and murdering 14 members of her family during the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. One of the men had snatched Bano’s daughter from her arms and smashed her head on a rock. At the time, 19-year-old Bano was pregnant.

The 11 convicts are: Radheshyam Shah, Jaswant Nai, Govind Nai, Kesar Vohania, Baka Vohania, Raju Soni, Ramesh Chandana, Shailesh Bhatt, Bipin Joshi, Pradip Modhiya and Mitesh Bhatt.

The convicts were released on August 15, 2022, after the Gujarat government granted them remission.

On January 8, the Supreme Court bench comprising Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan held that the court’s order in May 2022 directing the Gujarat government to decide the remission was secured by suppressing facts and fraud played on the court.

Nagarathna stated that the Gujarat government did not have the power to pass the remission order. The government of the state where the trial had taken place, which in this case is Maharashtra, is the appropriate authority that can pass such orders, Nagarathna held.

The Gujarat government has filed a review petition in the Supreme Court against the January 8 judgement in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case saying that some of the remarks made in the verdict about the State were “highly unwarranted”.