Pay Bilkis Bano Rs 50 lakh compensation in 2 weeks: SC

SC directed Gujarat govt to give Bano a house and a job

The Supreme Court on Monday questioned the Gujarat government as to why it did not pay Rs 50 lakh compensation, a house and a job to Bilkis Bano, gang-rape victim in 2002 riots.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the state government, said a review petition was to be filed against the April 23 order.

Advocate Shobha Gupta, appearing for Bano, however, submitted before a bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S A Bobde and S Abdul Nazeer that nothing had happened since the order.

"Why the order can't be complied within a week," the bench asked Mehta.

Mehta, on this, conceded that the order would be complied within two weeks.

The court then recorded an undertaking by the state government to do it within two weeks.

The court had on April 23 ordered the Gujarat government to pay Rs 50 lakh as compensation, a government job and accommodation to Bilkis Bano alias Bilkis Yaqoob Rasool, who suffered multiple rapes and killing of her infant daughter during the 2002 riots.

The court said, the money is the only healing balm that can be provided, as her counsel submitted that after the incident she was living a nomadic life.

The woman-victim was aged just 21 years and she was left devastated having faced the mob fury. She was raped multiple times, her infant daughter was smashed to death, her counsel had said.

Five months pregnant at that time, she was gang-raped, while six other members of her family managed to escape from the mob. The trial in the case initially began in Ahmedabad.

However, after Bano expressed apprehensions that the witnesses could be harmed and the CBI evidence tampered with, the apex court transferred the case to Mumbai in August 2004.

The high court had on May 4, 2017, convicted seven people -- five policemen and two doctors -- under sections 218 (not performing their duties) and section 201 (tampering of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The top court had on July 10, 2017, dismissed the appeals of two doctors and four policemen, including an IPS officer R S Bhagora, challenging their conviction by the high court saying there was "clear-cut evidence" against them. One of the officers did not appeal.

A special court had on January 21, 2008, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment 11 men for raping Bano and murdering seven of her family members in the aftermath of the Godhra riots, while acquitting seven persons including the policemen and doctors.