Justice for Bilkis

Monday was a good day for court decisions, as across the border the Indian Supreme Court too decided to undo a wrong. In August 2022, an Indian court decision caused anger and unrest among sections of India when the 11 men who were sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of gangrape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her seven family members (including her three-year-old child) were set free under the Gujarat government’s remission policy. For Bilkis Bano, a Muslim woman who was five-month pregnant when she was brutally raped in the 2002 Gujarat riots, the 2022 decision was a direct attack on her right to live without fear as her abusers were given a pass to roam free. The convicts, who were from Bilkis Bano’s neighbourhood, were said to be politically affiliated with the ruling BJP, giving way to the accusations that some undue interference and political meddling had resulted in their release. Six months later, the Indian Supreme Court has now reversed the mistakes made last year. On Monday, the country’s top court quashed the remission given to the convicts and ordered them to surrender to the police in two weeks.

Not only does the verdict provide some relief to the country’s minority communities that have been under vicious attacks ever since the Modi government rose to power, but also assures the country’s women that the law is not going to abandon them. In India, rape has long been used as a weapon during conflict. Women are seen as a target for collective punishment. The shame and humiliation the victims face often deter them from coming forward and registering formal complaints against their abusers, allowing people to keep committing these heinous crimes with impunity. It then becomes all the more important for higher authorities to show through their verdicts and actions that such crimes will not be tolerated. Any leniency shown by the courts and other state authorities inadvertently gives a green signal to miscreants to repeat the same cycle of abuse in the future. The leeway given by the state also makes it difficult for victims to come forward and fight. Bano herself had to face numerous obstacles in her legal battle against her abusers. She went through unspeakable horrors in 2002, and the 11 men guilty of raping her and killing her daughter were convicted six years later, in 2008. In 2019, after a 17-year-long battle, the Indian Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat government to pay her monetary compensation for the torture she went through.

Fascist groups across the world follow a rather horrifying playbook to spread fear and terror in areas they want to control. And in India, the rise of Hindu extremism has crossed all the red lines. Communal riots have now become a frequent occurrence, paring back the layers of harmony, tolerance, and secularity that India once proudly wore. The Modi government has to pay attention to the deep frictions that have been created in Indian society. Its goals of development and growth will not bear any fruit if the strategy is based on empowering one majority group in the country.