One of the convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case has approached the Supreme Court seeking more time to surrender.
This is because the country’s Supreme Court, in a judgment on January 8, had revoked the immunity granted to 11 convicts in the case and given them two weeks to surrender before jail authorities in Gujarat.
Govindbhai Nai, a resident of Dahod, Gujarat, one of the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang rape case, has filed a petition in the Supreme Court.
In his petition, Govindbhai has demanded that he be given four weeks’ time to surrender as he is the sole support of his ailing 88-year-old father and 75-year-old mother.
Claiming to be 55 years old, the applicant said in his application filed on Wednesday, “I am an old man who suffers from asthma and also has poor health.
I was operated on recently and also had to undergo angiography.”
Further, the application states that the convict has two children who are completely dependent on him for their financial and other needs.
The application states that since he was granted remission by the Gujarat government on August 15, 2022, he has joined the company of his family members and during the period of release, he has not committed any offence.
It is noteworthy that Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped during the 2002 riots in Gujarat.
In this case, 11 culprits had killed seven members of his family including his three-year old daughter. The trial of the case was transferred from Gujarat to Mumbai and the case was investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The apex court bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, in its judgment on January 8, had said that the Gujarat government was not the appropriate government to grant exemption under Section 432 of the CrPC as the venue of the trial was Mumbai and hence there was no right to consider the exemption. The authority should be with the Maharashtra government.