‘Feel like I can breathe again’, says Bilkis Bano after SC quashes remission to 11 convicts

The 43-year-old said that after the verdict, she ‘smiled for the first time in over a year-and-a-half’.

Jan 8, 2024 - 22:30

‘Feel like I can breathe again’, says Bilkis Bano after SC quashes remission to 11 convicts

Hours after the Supreme Court set aside the premature release of 11 life convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, the 43-year-old said on Monday that she felt she could “breathe again”.

The court set aside a Gujarat government order that granted remission to 11 men convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for gangraping Bano and murdering 14 members of her family during the 2002 communal riots in the state. A bench comprising Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan directed the convicts to surrender before jail authorities within two weeks.

Commenting on the verdict, Bano said that she smiled for the first time in a year-and-a-half. “Today is truly the New Year for me,” she remarked. “I have wept tears of relief...It feels like a stone the size of a mountain has been lifted from my chest, and I can breathe again.”

Bano thanked the Supreme Court “for giving me, my children and women everywhere, this vindication and hope in the promise of equal justice for all”.

The convicts had been released on August 15, 2022, after the Gujarat government approved their application under its remission policy. They were welcomed with garlands and sweets.

Bano said on Monday that when the convicts were released, she “simply collapsed” and felt that she had exhausted her reservoir...