The eleven convicts live a few meters away from Bilkis Bano’s house, where hoardings have been put up.
Staff Reporter | TwoCircles.net
AHMEDABAD (GUJARAT): Gujarat Police’s hoardings, assuring women’s safety, have been put up on the roof railing of Bilkis Bano’s old house at Randhikpur village in Dahod district. The house, which has been turned into a shop and rented to a Hindu woman, is abandoned.
As the men convicted of raping her settled back into a normal life, she is on the move, fearing for her life, since 11 people gang-raped her and killed seven members of her family during the 2002 communal pogrom of Gujarat.
Just a few meters away from Bilkis’s house live the 11 convicts who have begun living a normal life, visiting their shops and chit-chatting with the locals.
After spending 15 years in prison, the life-term convicts were released on August 15 — citing “good behavior” — under the Gujarat government’s remission policy.
This is not the first occasion when the culprits have stepped out of the prison. Even before their contentious release, which was approved by the Centre, they were out of jail for around and more than 1,000 days each either on temporary bail or parole and furlough.
And when they were out, contrary to the justification of “good behavior”, they harassed, intimidated, and attempted to outrage the modesty of the witnesses of the Bilkis Bano case.
TwoCircles.net has accessed two police complaints and one first information report (FIR) that alleged the convicts threatened and harassed the witnesses while they were out on parole.
In one of the complaints filed on July 28, 2017, by two witnesses — Ghanchi Imtiaz Bhai Yusuf Bhai and Ghanchi Adam Bhai Ismail Bhai — against one of the convicts, Govind Nai, it was alleged that the accused while on parole threatened to kill the complainants if they did not compromise and withdraw their statements.
The complaint was never turned into an FIR.
When asked about the same, Nai claimed that, as a Hindu, he could do no wrong.
“Do you think I am that kind of person? Have you ever seen Hindus, raping anyone? Can an uncle and a nephew together rape someone?” he said.
An FIR was lodged against Mitesh Bhai Bhatt, Radheshyam (the other two of the 11 convicts), and his brother at Radhikapur police station on July 6, 2020, on a complaint of Saberaben Patel, Pintu Bhai, and Ayyub (a witness in the Bilkis Bano case).
The three men, according to the FIR, threatened Saberaben and her daughter Arfa for briefing the media about the Bilkis’s case and Pintu Bhai for “implicating” them with his statements while they were out on parole.
The trio had been booked under sections 354 (assault or criminal force with intent to outrage modesty), 504 (intimidation), 506 (2) (threat to kill), and 114 (abetment) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Sitting at his firecrackers shop, Radheshyam’s brother Ashish denied the charges and said the FIR against them is “baseless”.
But the three complainants still stand by their charges. They too live in fear since the men who threatened them are out of jail.
“Sabra had spoken to the media regarding the Bilkis Bano’s incident (which had occurred on March 3, 2002). It enraged them so much that Mitesh, Radheshyam, and his brother followed Sabra and her daughter Arfa when they were going out for some work. They forcibly took the mother-daughter duo to a room, grabbed their hands, and assaulted and intimidated them. They were released hours after at around 9 pm,” alleged Pintu Bhai while talking to TwoCircles.net.
A charge sheet has been filed in the case, which is currently pending in court.
Another witness Mansuri Abdul Razzaq Abdul Majid filed a complaint with Dahod police against Sailesh Chimmanlal Bhatt on January 1 last year, alleging that the convict while on parole threatened him.
This complaint too was never turned into an FIR.
TwoCircles.net tried to speak to the officials who had cleared the early release of the 11 men despite them facing grave charges. But none of them were available for comments.
The entire police and district administration are evading questions. Dahod District Magistrate Dr. Sujal Jayantibhai Mayatra, who had headed the panel that recommended the premature release of the convicts, was not responsive, while Superintendent of Police Hitesh Joysar, who also approved the release, hung up the call after hearing the questions.
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (headed by Amit Shah who was Gujarat’s home minister when the state had witnessed the pogrom) had approved the premature release of 11 convicts, the Supreme Court was told October 17.
The revelation came to the fore after the Gujarat government submitted an over-400-page affidavit in the apex court in response to public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Subhashini Ali, professor Rekha Verma and journalist Revati Laul against the early release of the convicts.
The affidavit further revealed that the superintendent of police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had investigated the case, had in March last year opposed the premature release application filed by the convicts. A sessions judge in Mumbai who had tried the case and convicted the 11 men too had objected to the application.
But the objections were raised before the Supreme Court’s ruling in May this year, which directed the Gujarat government to initiate the process of remission according to its 1992 policy under which the opinion of the concerned district police officer, district magistrate, and chairman of the Jail and Advisory Board Committee is required to decide a remission application.
Following the Supreme Court’s May order, the concerned authorities — the district magistrate, the superintendent of police, the superintendent of Godhra sub-jail, the additional director general of police, prisons and correctional administration, and two BJP MLAs — recommended premature release of the 10 of the 11 convicts.
However, about one — Radheyshyam Shah — there were objections from all except for the Jail Advisory Committee. In his case, the central government went by the jail advisory committee’s opinion and sanctioned the premature release.