Srinagar, Jan 08: The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) welcomes the judgment by the Supreme Court turning down the Gujarat government’s remission to eleven convicts who had been sentenced to life for alleged gang raping of pregnant Bilkis Bano, members of her family during 2002 Gujarat riots. The court has asked the convicts to surrender back to prison within two weeks.
“The Supreme Court division bench, going beyond the `competence’ of the Gujarat government to pass the remission order, has actually stated that it acted in ‘complicity’ with the convicts. The bench has also stated that a fraud has been played by the Gujarat government in presenting the facts in justifying the remission order. The scathing judgment has stated that if the convicts can circumvent the consequence of their conviction, peace and tranquility in the society will be reduced to a chimaera,” the (CPI(M)) said in a statement.
“The fact that the Gujarat government has furnished that the decision was also based on the concurrence of the Central government, (which) makes it equally complicit in this ‘complicity with the convicts’,” the statement said, adding, “Governments are constitutional entities and if they act in violation of the jurisdiction and considerations of law, it will play havoc with our very existence as a democracy.”
