Protests spark review into release of rapists
ELEVEN MEN WERE CONVICTED OF GANG-RAPING A PREGNANT WOMAN
INDIA’S Supreme Court will hold a hearing on a petition challenging the release last week of 11 men convicted of gang-raping a pregnant Muslim woman during riots in 2002 in Gujarat.
Last Monday (15), authorities in the Panchmahals district of Gujarat released the men after considering the time they had served after their conviction in 2008 and their behaviour while jailed.
However, critics contend that their discharge contradicts the government’s stated policy of uplifting women in a country with numerous, well-documented instances of violence against them.
The top court verbally agreed on Tuesday (23) to hear a Public Interest Litigation petition to reverse the state’s remission order freeing the men, Kapil Sibal, an attorney representing a group of women seeking the reversal, said.
The women include Subhashini Ali, an Indian politician and member of the Communist Party of India, Revati Laul, an independent journalist, and Mahua Moitra, a member of parliament from the opposition Trinamool Congress Party, Sibal said. The petition holds that the men must serve their full life sentences.
The violence in Gujarat in 2002 was one of India’s worst religious riots and over 1,000 people died.
The months-long riots were triggered after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire. Hindus accused Muslims of setting the fire, but Muslims said the train attack was part of a conspiracy to target them.
During the riots, the 11 Hindu men gang-raped a pregnant Muslim woman, and her three-year-old daughter was among those 14 killed by a mob.
The rape victim’s husband, Bilkis Yakoob Rasool, earlier said the courts and the government did not tell them the convicted men would be released and that it had shaken his faith in justice.
In a statement released by her lawyer last Wednesday (17), the woman said she was “bereft of words. I am still numb.”
“I trusted the highest courts in our land. I trusted the system, and I was learning slowly to live with my trauma. The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice. My sorrow and my wavering faith is not for myself alone but for every woman who is struggling for justice in courts,” she said.
The attack took place when Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was Gujarat state chief minister.
Last Thursday (18) around a dozen people staged a demonstration in New Delhi against the release.
Opposition politician Rahul Gandhi, grandson of former premier Indira Gandhi, tweeted: “Prime Minister... the entire country is seeing the difference between your words and deeds.”
The Gujarat state government, run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), defended the decision to release the men.
“The remission of the 11 convicts was considered after taking various factors like life imprisonment term in India which is typically of 14 years or more, age, behaviour of the person and so on,” senior official Raj Kumar was quoted as saying.