The top court of India will hear a petition to overturn the discharge of gang-rape prisoners.
The release of 11 men who were found guilty of gang-raping a pregnant Muslim lady during Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat, India, in 2002 will be the subject of a hearing before the Supreme Court of India.
Authorities in Gujarat’s Panchmahals district released the men on Monday after taking into account the time they had served following their 2008 conviction and their behaviour in detention. However, detractors claim that their dismissal runs counter to the government’s professed goal of empowering women in a nation where there have been numerous, well-established cases of violence against them.
According to Kapil Sibal, a counsel for a group of women seeking to have the state’s remission order reversed, the Court verbally consented on Tuesday to consider a Public Interest Litigation petition. The lawsuit seeks to have the state’s order releasing the men reversed.
According to Sibal, the women include Mahua Moitra, a member of parliament from the opposition Trinamool Congress Party, Revati Laul, an independent journalist, and Subhashini Ali, a politician from India and member of the Communist Party of India.
According to the petition, the men must serve out their entire life terms.One of India’s biggest religious riots occurred in Gujarat in 2002, resulting in more than 1,000 fatalities, the majority of whom were Muslims.
The riots, which lasted for months, started when a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire. Hindus claimed that Muslims started the fire, but Muslims countered that the attack on the train was part of a larger plot to harm their community.
The pregnant Muslim mother was gang-raped during the riots by the 11 men, all of whom were Hindu, and her three-year-old daughter was one of the 14 people killed by the mob.
At the time of the riots, Gujarat was led by current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is still in power.
The rape victim’s husband, Bilkis Yakoob Rasool, previously claimed that neither the courts nor the government informed him of the convicted men’s impending release, which caused him to lose faith in the judicial system.