India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Bilkis Bano, who was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, has moved the Supreme Court stating that she was not satisfied with Gujarat Government’s compliance of the Supreme Court’s orders in April 2019.
The hearing on the petition was to take place yesterday. However, it could not be heard because the connectivity between the court and her advocate Shobha Gupta went off when the hearing was just to begin online. The next hearing would be held after a week.
On April 23, 2019, the apex court had ordered the Gujarat government to pay Rs. 50 lakh as monetary compensation, to give her a job and a house.
Though the state government paid Rs. 50 lakh after more than five months of the order and Bilkis has got it deposited in a fixed deposit account, she objected to the government allotting her a 50 square yard of plot and job of a peon in a government office on contract basis.
Regarding accommodation, she has contended that the government allot her a proper built up house with all facilities, instead of a small open plot, where her family, including husband and children, could live a dignified life.
She has also rejected the offer of a peon’s job on contractual basis. She has pleaded that she was not in a sound mental state because of the trauma she underwent during the riots and also after that, and the job be given to her husband-Yaqoob Rasool.
A family member of Bilkis said that it was also not possible for her to attend job owing to the nature of threat she faces because of 11 accused having been given life sentence by the Bombay High Court in the case. Three government officials, who were found to have made a bid to tamper with the evidence in the Bilkis case, were stripped of their pension and an IPS officer was demoted by two ranks.
Bilks was five-month’s pregnant when the riots took place. On March 3, 2002, she had escaped from her village Randhikpur in Dahod district for safety along with members of her family but the vehicle in which they were travelling, was attacked. Seven members of her family were killed. She was gang-raped.
However, she survived and then began a long legal battle.
