Supreme Court's 'exemplary' direction has reaffirmed my faith in judiciary: Bilkis Bano

Bilkis Bano, who was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots Wednesday said the Supreme Court's "exemplary" direction to the state government to provide Rs 50 lakh compensation has reaffirmed her faith in the judiciary and will give hope to other victims of rape and communal violence.

Bano, however, lamented that her family did not get any support from the state government during their 17-year-long fight for justice.

The Supreme Court Tuesday directed the Gujarat government to give Rs 50 lakh compensation, a job and accommodation to Bano. The top court also directed the state government to pay compensation to Bano within two weeks.

Seven of Bano's family members were also killed during the riots.

"The Supreme Court's direction to Gujarat government has reaffirmed my faith in the judiciary and the Constitution," she said.

Expressing gratitude to the judiciary for "acknowledging her suffering and struggle," Bano said she will create a fund in the memory of her first child Saleha so that it can help other women survivors of communal violence in their journeys to justice.

Saleha was brutally killed by a mob during the riots.

"The apex court understood my pain, my suffering and my struggle to regain the constitutional rights that were lost to me in the violence of 2002. No citizen should have to suffer at the hands of the state whose duty is to protect us," said Bano, who has been leading almost a nomadic life due to safety concerns for many years.

She said she could not even give a proper burial to her daughter Saleha, a feeling which has always haunted her.

"My daughter Saleha's body was lost in the tide of hatred that swept over Gujarat in 2002. There is no grave for Saleha that I could visit and weep upon but her spirit has been with me. I know she is up there, somewhere, and through helping others, she will live on in the lives of other children," she said.

Bano said her elder daughter (16) who was in her womb during the 2002 violence wants to be a lawyer to fight for justice for others.

When asked if she was satisfied with the life sentence given to 11 convicted in her case, Bano said her "battle was never for revenge, but for justice".

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Bano who cast her vote in Devgadh Baria village on Tuesday said that the apex court's "exemplary" direction will give hope to other victims of rape and communal violence.

According to the prosecution, on March 3, 2002, Bilkis Bano's family was attacked by a mob at Randhikpur village near Ahmedabad in the aftermath of the Godhra riots.

Bilkis, five months pregnant at that time, was gang-raped and some members of her family killed. The trial in the case initially began in Ahmedabad.

However, after Bano expressed apprehensions that the witnesses could be harmed and the CBI evidence tampered with, the apex court transferred the case to Mumbai in August 2004.

A special court on 21 January 2008 convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment 11 men for raping Bano and murdering seven of her family members while acquitting seven persons including the policemen and doctors.

The high court, on May 4, 2017, convicted seven people including five policemen and two doctors under sections 218 (not performing their duties) and section 201 (tampering of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The top court had on July 10, 2017, dismissed the appeals of two doctors and four policemen, including Bhagora, challenging their conviction by the high court saying there was "clear-cut evidence" against them. One of the officers did not appeal.

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The convicts had later approached the Bombay High Court and sought to quash and set aside the trial court's conviction.

The CBI had also filed an appeal in the high court seeking harsher punishment of death for three of the convicted persons on the ground that they were the main perpetrators of the crime.

The convicts had challenged the order on three main grounds - that all evidence in the case was fabricated by CBI, that Bilkis gave birth to a child after the incident, proving that she could not have been gang-raped, and the failure to find the bodies of some of her family members which proved that they were not killed.