SC halts controversial remission in Bilkis Bano case: Justice prevails over politics

Apocrypha has it that President Franklin D Roosevelt described Nicaragua's dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia as being 'a son of a bitch, but... our son of a bitch'. Doing the wrong thing because of having a strategic interest in protecting the wrongdoers - in the case of the US, Garcia was an anti-communist ally - has its many case studies in geopolitics.

This Monday, such a wrong in our own backyard was corrected by the Supreme Court when it struck down the relief granted by the Gujarat government in August 2022 to 11 men sentenced for life in the Bilkis Bano case related to rape and murder during the 2002 Gujarat riots. This is a palpable relief.

The heinous nature of the crime made the granting of remission not just shocking but also put the very legal notion of remission - 'forgiving one's sins' without denying the crimes - on shaky ground. And the grounds on which the remission was granted was blatantly political, coming suspiciously during state elections in Gujarat. Such Rooseveltian realpolitik was seeming made to apply when the 11 prisoners were released.


The court has overturned that travesty on technical grounds - the Gujarat government not having remit to release the guilty after the Bilkis Bano case was moved to a Maharashtra court, being one of them. The apex court was certainly more judicious in their decision than the Gujarat government.

The executive's prerogative to grant remission rightfully remains in force. But when it flies in the face of the magnitude of the crime(s) - and, dare we say, decency - it is imperative that such blatant politicisation is sheared for all to see. Justice is no gladiatorial bout where the fate of the guilty is decided by a politically aligned thumbs up or unaligned thumbs down.