The Gujarat
government on Tuesday moved Supreme Court and filed a review petition seeking
to expunge certain remarks made against the government for its conduct with
regard to the premature release of the 11 convicts in Bilkis Bano case.
The State said
that the adverse remarks made against the government in the apex court's judgment
have caused great prejudice to the State government.
The Gujarat
government has sought to delete adverse remarks against the State.
It further argued
that the State government had only acted as per the mandamus issued by the
Supreme Court by way of its judgment of May 2022.
Gujarat
government was acting as per the Supreme Court's May 2022 judgment which
directed it to consider the remission application of one of the convicts, it
said in the review plea.
The State
submitted that it cannot be held to have "usurped" the jurisdiction
of the State of Maharashtra when it was acting as per a direction of the
Supreme Court.
On January 8, the
Supreme Court struck down the Gujarat government's order granting remission to
11 convicts who had gangraped Bilkis Bano and murdered her family members
during the 2002 Godhra riots.
The top court had
held that the Gujarat government was not competent to pass the remission orders
but the Maharashtra government. It had said the appropriate government to
decide the remission was the State (in this case Maharashtra) within whose
territorial limits the accused are sentenced and not where the crime is
committed or the accused are imprisoned.
It had held that
the judgment of May 13, 2022, by which another bench of the apex court had directed
the Gujarat government to consider remission of a convict as per the 1992
policy, was obtained by "playing fraud" on the court and by
suppressing material facts.
Gujarat
government usurped the powers of Maharashtra government acting in furtherance
of the judgment dated May 13, 2022, which in our opinion is a
"nullity", the apex court had said.
Filing the review
plea, the Gujarat government objected to the apex court's observation that
State of Gujarat has acted in tandem and was complicit with convict.