They asked the CJI to rescind the order of remission passed by the Gujarat government and send convicts back to jail to serve out their life sentence.
They asked the CJI to rescind the order of remission passed by the Gujarat government and send convicts back to jail to serve out their life sentence.
More than 130 former civil servants on Saturday wrote an open letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) against the premature release of 11 men who were jailed in the gangrape case of Bilkis Bano and requested him to rectify this “horrendously wrong decision”.
They asked the CJI to rescind the order of remission passed by the Gujarat government and send the 11 persons convicted of gangrape and murder back to jail to serve out their life sentence.
“Like the overwhelming majority of people in our country, we are aghast at what happened in Gujarat a few days ago, on the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence,” it said.
Former Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung, former Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, former foreign secretaries Shivshankar Menon and Sujatha Singh and former Home Secretary G K Pillai were among the 134 signatories to the letter, written under the aegis of the Constitutional Conduct Group.
Justice Uday Umesh Lalit was sworn in as the 49th Chief Justice of India on Saturday.
On August 25, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre and the Gujarat government on a plea challenging the release of the 11 convicts and posted the matter for hearing after two weeks.
The former civil servants said the release of the convicts has “outraged the nation”.
“We write to you because we are deeply distressed by this decision of the government of Gujarat and because we believe that it is only the Supreme Court which has the prime jurisdiction, and hence the responsibility, to rectify this horrendously wrong decision,” the letter read.
Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gangraped while fleeing the riots that broke out after the Godhra train bu
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