The Supreme Court of India has issued a notice on the appeals filed by two convicts, Bipinchand Kanaiyalal Joshi and Pradip Ramanlal Modhiya, in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gang rape and murder case. The convicts are challenging a May 4, 2017 Bombay High Court judgment that upheld their life sentences for murder and gang rape committed during the Gujarat riots.
Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gang-raped and seven members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, were killed by a mob on March 3, 2002, in Gujarat's Dahod district during the post-Godhra riots. The case, initially closed by local police, was reopened following a petition by Bano and was investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In 2008, a special CBI court in Mumbai convicted 11 men for the crimes, sentencing them to life imprisonment. The Bombay High Court upheld these convictions in 2017. The current Supreme Court notice is a procedural step, meaning the court will formally hear the appeals of Joshi and Modhiya against their life sentences. The court has not yet scheduled a hearing date.
The case remains a landmark in India's legal history concerning communal violence and justice for sexual assault survivors. The Supreme Court's decision to examine the appeals comes after a separate and controversial 2022 Gujarat government decision to grant remission to 11 other convicts in the same case, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court in January 2024.
