Bilkis Bano, who was raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, filed an intervention application in the Bombay high court on Tuesday.
Bilkis Bano, who was raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, filed an intervention application in the Bombay high court on Tuesday. In her application, Ms Bano has demanded the death penalty for three of the 11 convicts. She also demanded that the court hear her arguments before the convicts are sentenced.
A division bench of Justice V.J. Tahilramani and Justice Mrudula Bhatkar was hearing an appeal filed by the 11 convicts in the case of Ms Bano’s rape and the murder of her family.
Ms Bano approached the high court and filed the intervention application through her lawyer, Vijay Heeremath.
In January 2008, a Mumbai sessions court had convicted the 11 accused and sentenced them to life imprisonment for being guilty of raping Ms Bano and murdering her family.
Now, all the 11 accused have moved the HC against the session court’s sentence. The CBI has also filed a petition and sought the death penalty for all the accused.
On Tuesday, the court told Ms Bano’s advocate that it would consider her application when the arguments of the CBI start.
According to the prosecution, on March 3, 2002, a mob attacked Ms Bano’s family at Randhikapur village near Ahmedabad during the post-Godhra riots, killing seven members of her family.
Ms Bano, who was five months pregnant at the time, was gang-raped while six other members of her family managed to escape the mob’s clutches. The trial in the case began in Ahmedabad.
But after Ms Bano expressed apprehension that witnesses could be harmed and CBI evidence could be tampered, the Supreme Court had transferred the case to Mumbai in 2004.
