Case Bilkis Bano: Dahod SP Says There Is No Information YET Regarding Convicts’ Surrender

After the Gujarat government’s decision to give the 11 prisoners in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case remission was overturned by the Supreme Court, a top police officer in Dahod said that they had not yet been informed about their surrender. According to him, there is still a police presence in the prisoner’s neighborhood to keep the calm.

However, according to Dahod Superintendent of Police Balram Meena on Tuesday, the prisoners are “not incommunicado” and some of them are visiting family. Following the 2002 Godhra train burning event, communal rioting broke out, and Bilkis Bano, then 21 years old and five months pregnant, was raped while escaping. Six additional family members as well as her three-year-old daughter were murdered.

On Monday, the Gujarat government was criticized by the Supreme Court for misusing its discretion and the remission that had been given to the eleven offenders was annulled. On Independence Day in 2022, all of the prisoners who had been prematurely freed were ordered to return to prison within two weeks.

Meena said, “We have not received a copy of the Supreme Court judgment, and we have not received any information regarding their surrender.”

The defendants are locals of Singvad taluka, where police had been stationed since Monday morning—prior to the announcement of the verdict—to uphold law and order and prevent intercommunal strife, he claimed.

Some of the prisoners are visiting their family, and they are not kept off from society. Police are still on duty across the Randhikpur police station area, but we do not have any information and have not gotten a copy of the order, Meena said.