Meanwhile, the Indian Express has reported that nine out of the 11 convicts whose remission the apex court undid on Monday have gone “missing” from their villages in Gujarat’s Dahod.
In an unusual message of support, wrestler Vinesh Phogat wrote to Bilkis Bano about the recent Supreme Court judgement in the latter’s favour, calling it a “victory for all of us women”.
“Bilkis ji, this is a victory for all of us women. You have fought a long struggle. We take courage looking at your journey,” Phogat said in Hindi on X (formerly Twitter).
Bano is the survivor of a gruesome attack during the 2002 Gujarat riots in which she and her family members were gang-raped by a mob. Fourteen of her relatives were also slain in the incident.
Eleven people convicted and sentenced to life for the gang-rape and mass murder were released early by the Gujarat government in 2022, but the Supreme Court cancelled their remission on Monday (January 8) and ordered them to report back to prison.
Phogat is among the main faces of last year’s protests by prominent wrestlers against BJP MP and former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who is accused of sexually harassing at least seven wrestlers. Singh has denied the allegations.
Phogat is also the first Indian woman wrestler to have won a gold at both the Commonwealth and Asian Games, as well as the only Indian woman wrestler to win multiple medals at the World Wrestling Championships.
In other news related to the Supreme Court’s judgement on Monday, the Indian Express reports that nine of the 11 convicts in the case went “missing” from the twin villages of Randhikpur and Singvad in Gujarat’s Dahod district.
Bano was also in Randhikpur when the Godhra train burning, which triggered the 2002 riots, occurred.
Akhambhai Chaturbhai Raval (87), father of one of the convicts, Govind Nai (55), claimed his son was innocent and blamed the conviction on “political vendetta of [the] Congress”.
He told IE that Govind had left the house “a week ago”. However, its report also cites a local policeman as saying that Nai had left home on Saturday (January 6).
His parents are reported as also saying they are a “Hindu faith-abiding family, incapable of committing the crimes” that have been alleged against their son as well as against Nai’s uncle and Akhambhai’s brother, Jashvant Nai, who is another of the 11 convicts.
“I wish and pray that he [Nai] gets to do seva [service] at the [Ram] mandir pratishthan in Ayodhya. It is better to do seva than do nothing and roam around every day. He has not been able to do anything since he was released [from prison],” Raval was quoted as saying.
“Going back to jail is not a big deal and it is not that he was out of jail unlawfully. He was released with due process of law and now the law has told him to go back, so he will go back.”
Source: https://thewire.in/rights/9-out-11-convicts-in-bilkis-bano-case-go-missing-report-says