The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Gujarat and Maharashtra governments to respond to appeals filed by two convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case of 2002 against their conviction and the sentence of life imprisonment handed out to them by the Bombay high court in 2017. The Supreme Court issued notice to the Maharashtra and Gujarat governments (PTI FILE)

A bench of justices Rajesh Bindal and Vijay Bishnoi issued notice on the appeals moved by Bipinchand Kanaiyalal Joshi and Pradip Ramanlal Modhiya and posted the matter for hearing on May 5.

The two, represented by senior advocates Sidharth Luthra and Sonia Mathur, are the first to challenge their conviction in the March 2002 case amid the Gujarat communal riots when Bano was trying to escape along with her family. The riots broke out in the aftermath of the torching of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27, 2002.

Bano, a 21-year-old pregnant woman at the time, was gangraped and several members of her family were killed. Eleven people were charged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which probed the case following an order of the top court in December 2003.

In August 2004, the Supreme Court shifted the trial to Mumbai. The designated court sentenced the accused to life imprisonment in 2008. The Bombay high court upheld their conviction and sentence on May 4, 2017.

Luthra told the court that the delay in challenging the high court order was due to developments during the interregnum, as the accused were granted remission by the Gujarat government on August 10, 2022, after which they were released. Bilkis Bano and others challenged the government order in the top court, which set it aside in January 2024. The convicts subsequently surrendered and are currently lodged in a jail in Gujarat.

The top court’s order was passed on the ground that the power to grant remission in this case lay with the Maharashtra government, and the Gujarat government “usurped” this power.

The 11 convicts were convicted under sections 302 (murder) and 376(2)(g) (gang rape) of the Indian Penal Code.