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"I can breathe again. This is what justice feels like," said Bilkis Bano, in a statement on Monday, 8 January, after the Supreme Court quashed the 2022 Gujarat government order granting early release of 11 convicts in her case.
The statement, issued through her lawyer Shobha Gupta, quoted Bano saying:
Directing the 11 convicts to report to jail authorities within two weeks, a apex court bench, led by Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan, noted that the Gujarat government was "not competent" to pass the remission order.
Bano thanked the apex court for giving not just her children and her, but all women "this vindication and hope in the promise of equal justice for all."
In her statement, she also thanked those who have stood in her support and said,
On 15 August 2022, the Gujarat government granted remission and released eleven men, sentenced to life for the gang rape of then 21-year-old Bano, and the murder of seven of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Reliving the moments after she heard about the remission order, Bilkis said, "I simply collapsed."
However, Bilkis said that thousands of people and woman stood in support of her, which gave her the courage to fight back.
"Even as I absorb the full meaning of this verdict for my own life, and for my children’s lives, the dua that emerges from my heart today is simple – the rule of law, above all else and equality before law, for all," Bano concluded in her statement.
While pronouncing the verdict, the apex court stated that the government to decide the remission is the state within whose jurisdiction the accused were sentenced, and not the state within whose territory the offence was committed.
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