Bilkis case: HC begins final hearing on appeals by 11 convicts

The Bombay High Court on Friday commenced the final hearing on the appeals filed by 11 people convicted in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gangrape case and also on the petition by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seeking death penalty for three of them.

Eleven men, who were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court on January 21, 2008 for gangraping Bilkis and murdering seven of her family members in the aftermath of the 2002 Godhra riots, had approached the high court challenging their conviction and sought quashing of the trial court's order.

The prosecuting agency CBI had also filed an appeal in the high court seeking death penalty for three of the 11 convicts.

A division bench of Justices V K Tahilramani and Mridula Bhatkar started final hearing on the appeals while rapping the CBI counsel Hiten Venegaonkar for not being prepared.

"You (Venegaonkar) are not prepared. Please take proper charge of the case. Read the case papers over the weekend. Prepare a chart of witnesses, victims, deceased persons, convicts and acquitted accused," the bench said.

The rap came after Venegaonkar while arguing kept fumbling and confusing names of witnesses, victims and convicted people.

During arguments when the court sought to know the cause of death of the seven people, he said he did not know as the post-mortem report was in Gujarati.

"How can you (Venegaonkar) say so? You should have prepared yourself before we start hearing the appeals," the court said.

According to the prosecution, on March 3, 2002, Bilkis Bano's family was attacked by a mob at Randhikpur village near Ahmedabad during the post-Godhra riots and seven members of her family were killed.

Bilkis, who was five months pregnant at the time, was gangraped while six other members of her family managed to escape from the mob.

The trial in the case had begun in Ahmedabad. However, after Bano expressed apprehensions that witnesses could be harmed and the CBI evidence tampered with, the Supreme Court had transferred the case to Mumbai in August 2004.

CBI's case is that convict Shailesh Bhatt snatched and killed the three-year-old child of Bilkis Bano, while Jaswantbhai Nai, Govindbhai Nai and Naresh Mordhiya caught hold of Bilkis, forcibly dragged her to a tree and gangraped her.

The prosecution had alleged that the convicts had also assaulted other relatives of Bilkis physically and sexually.

The convicts are Jaswantbhai, Govindbhai, Shailesh Bhatt, Radhyesham Shah, Bipin Chandra Joshi, Kesarbhai Vohania, Pradeep Mordhiya, Bakabhai Vohania, Rajubhai Soni, Mitesh Bhatt and Ramesh Chandana.

The convicts have challenged the order on three main grounds, that all evidence in the case was fabricated by CBI, that Bilkis was not gangraped and that bodies of some of her family members were not found which proved they were not killed.

CBI sought enhancement of punishment for three of them — Jaswantbhai Nai, Govindbhai Nai and Radhyesham Shah — on the ground that they had raped Bilkis.

Five police officers — Narpat Singh, Idris Abdul Sayed, Bhikhabhai Patel, Ramsingh Bhabhor, and B S Bhagora — who allegedly refused to take down the complaint of Bilkis and her relatives and instead forced them to sign some papers and threatened them not to disclose the offence of gangrape and assault, were acquitted by the trial court.