Bilkis Bano case crime against humanity: Mahua Moitra tells SC

New Delhi: The gang-rape of Bilkis Bano and murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots were a “crime against humanity”, TMC MP Mahua Moitra told the Supreme Court on Thursday, and accused the Gujarat government of having failed to exercise its constitutional mandate of protecting the rights of women and children by granting remission to 11 convicts in the “horrendous” case.

Besides the petition filed by Bilkis Bano, several other PILs including one by CPI(M) leader Subhashini Ali, independent journalist Revati Laul and former vice-chancellor of Lucknow University Roop Rekha Verma have challenged the remission. Moitra has also filed a PIL against the remission.

Challenging the remission granted to the convicts, senior advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for Moitra, submitted before a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan that the State failed in exercising its constitutional mandate of protecting the rights of women and children and chose to ensure their premature release contrary to the law.

“It is submitted that crime committed against Bilkis Bano cannot be viewed in isolation from the situation prevalent in Gujarat at the time the crime was committed and they were in the backdrop of the 2002 riots where sectarian and communal violence was widespread...

“What happened to Bano was cruel, inhuman and degrading. It is my submission that what happened to her was crime against humanity because it happened in a situation of widespread communal violence which was targeted at a community,” Jaising said.

Justifying Moitra’s locus standi (entitlement to bring a lawsuit in court) to intervene in the matter, Jaising said the Trinamool Congress MP has approached the SC in public interest and she is not a “busybody” as argued by convicts.