Stolen Justice in Bilkis Bano’s Case Sends a Warning to Muslims in India

NEW DELHI — On August 15, as India was celebrating the 75th anniversary of its independence — and nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi championed empowering and respecting women in his Independence Day speech — 11 men convicted of gang raping a Muslim woman in 2002 were granted premature release from their life sentences, citing a 1992 policy that has since been rendered outdated on the state level.

The 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat are considered one of the worst episodes of communal violence in the country since its independence.

On February 27, 2002, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on fire in Godhra, a town in Gujarat that was 40-percent Muslim, killing at least 58 pilgrims.

Hindu mobs retaliated, blaming Muslims for the pilgrims’ deaths, and unleashed a wave of brutal anti-Muslim violence, including killings, mass rapes, beatings, and lootings, that lasted for over two months. In the end, more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were murdered, 20,000 Muslim homes were destroyed, and at least 150,000 people were displaced.

At the time, Modi was serving as chief minister of the state and has been widely criticized by the international human rights community for his role in the riots, who accuse him of allowing the violence as a way of letting Hindus “vent their anger” and inciting the extrajudicial killings himself. Maya Kodnani, an ex-minister and aide to Modi, was identified by a trial court as “the kingpin of the riots.”

On March 3, 2002, after fleeing the riots and arson in her village of Randhikpur, Bilkis Bano — only 20 years old at the time and five months pregnant — was trying to outrun the violence with her three-year-old daughter Saleha and other family members when a mob armed with swords, sickles, and sticks attacked them.

Bano, her mother Haleema, and her cousin Shamim were brutally gang raped in the assault. Both Haleema and Shamim died there, as was Bano’s young toddler Saleha killed in the assault.

Bano, miraculously, survived. While she was unconscious, the mob left thinking she was dead. According to several reports, after three hours, Bano regained consciousness and borrowed clothes from an Adivasi woman to make her way to the police station and register a complaint. She would later learn the fate of her loved ones. Ultimately, 14 members of her family were murdered that day.

It took Bano six years to attain even a semblance of justice for herself and her slain family. She faced resistance at every turn, including dismissal — and outright intimidation — from police and state officials, destroyed evidence, burials without autopsies, and death threats. Even the doctors who examined her lied that she hadn’t been raped. After Bano complained about the intimidation and threats, her case was transferred outside Gujarat to the Maharashtra government.

It was eventually taken up by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Supreme Court of India, which ordered an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

On January 21, 2008, a special CBI court in Maharashtra convicted 11 men for conspiring to rape a pregnant woman, and of unlawful assembly under sections of the Indian Penal Code. The attackers were sentenced to life imprisonment. Seven others were acquitted citing lack of evidence, and one person died during the trial.

A reluctant justice system

“I am still numb,” said Bano in a statement shortly after the men’s release. “It has shaken my faith in justice. No one enquired about my safety and well-being before taking such a big and unjust decision.”

Bano, who is currently sheltering at an unknown location due to ongoing security threats, appealed to the state government in Gujarat to “undo this harm” and ensure hers and her family’s safety.

Multiple public interest litigations also have been filed with the Supreme Court challenging the remission, as have statements urging the court to intervene and reverse the decision.

The high court has since asked the state government to place on record all the relevant documents concerning the remission — a move that Shobha Gupta, Bilkis Bano’s lawyer and counsel, has criticized as needless, especially given the heinous nature of their crimes. She has been in contact with Bano since 2002, when she was persuaded by the NHRC to represent Bano’s case.

“This is enough clemency,” Gupta argued, given that their sentences were life imprisonment rather than the death penalty.

Gujarat defended that the men had completed at least 14 years of their sentences, in which time their behavior was found to be “good.” It also told the apex court that the union government led by Modi, had approved of their premature release.

The Supreme Court has adjourned the hearing of the petitions challenging the remission until November 29.

‘Ideal citizens’

C.K. Raulji, one of the members of the committee that freed the men, defended that because the men were Brahmins (the upper caste), they had “good sanskaar” (upbringing). “I don’t know whether they committed any crime or not,” he told one reporter.

“It reveals the thinking that the people who are not Brahmins are subject to different rules,” said Krishnan. “If you are a Hindu and a Brahmin — and above all a Muslim-hater — then you are basically an ideal citizen of the Hindu nation.”

Upon their release, the men were welcomed with sweets and garlands. Pictures and videos of their warm reception were widely circulated on social media, sparking mass outrage and protests across the country.

“As a society, we have to shame every single one of them who was involved in this obnoxious and completely foolish act of garlanding, distributing sweets, and showing public regard to someone who was convicted by all courts for none less than gangrapes [and] mass murders,” said Gupta.

Gupta said she interpreted it as a message that they respect rapists.

“What if the victim was their daughter, sister, son or relative, or they themselves had the same [done to them]?” Gupta continued, drawing attention to the presence of women among the crowd that received them.

Many also interpret the act as not only condoning but celebrating the crime that they had committed, which were raping a Muslim woman and lynching Muslims without remorse.

“It is a deliberate humiliation,” said Kavita Krishnan, a Delhi-based activist and secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association. “It is a message to the courageous Bilkis that she does not count as human because she is a Muslim.”

A grave message to Muslims

The committee that recommended the men’s release based on the 1992 remission policy came under heavy criticism after it was revealed to have members from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including Raulji.

The move also sparked criticism for its timing: many believe that the BJP is hoping to influence Hindu voters on the eve of Gujarat elections.

“They know that they have failed on many fronts, including the management of the pandemic, the fudging of Covid death numbers, unemployment, and current inflation,” said Krishnan. “So, [the BJP] wants to face voters by reminding them of the killings, the massacres, and slaughters of Muslims 20 years ago.”

After the men’s release, Muslims villagers in fear of what would happen upon their return — what many have criticized as the desired result of the remission: sending a message of state-sponsored terror to the Muslim minorities of Gujarat and across the country.

“Within two to three days of their release, almost 80 families left fearing for their lives,” said Dawood, one of the villagers now living some 35 kilometers away. “Everyone left, and I left too.”

“Everyone is in shock,” said another local, who introduced himself as Bano’s uncle. He said that while the men were still in jail, Bano’s surviving family were still targeted by threats and intimidation. Now, he said, “We are not in a condition to decide what to do and how to do.”

As violence against Muslims becomes so frequent across the country as to become normalized and banal — from mob lynchings to Muslim activists, religious scholars and leaders being detained, Muslim girls deprived of educational rights for wearing hijab, and open calls for genocide by the BJP members — the decision to release Bano’s attackers is yet another mournful chapter for Muslims under Modi’s India.

“It tells you what Hindu Rashtra (Hindu majoritarianism) will be like if the BJP succeeds in establishing it as they wish to do after winning general elections in 2024,” said Krishnan.

Gupta, meanwhile, is still pushing for the Supreme Court to intervene and reverse what she considered a grave and costly mistake. “We all are looking up to them.”