Bilkis Bano case: Two convicts' petition against cancellation of their sentence remission rejected

New Delhi:The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition filed by two of the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case, who were challenging the January 8 verdict quashing their remission.

“What is this petition? How can it be maintained? It is misconceived. How can one file a petition under Article 32? We cannot sit on an appeal against an order passed by another court,” a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Sanjay Kumar said. The court allowed Rishi Malhotra to withdraw the petition.

Meanwhile, convict Bhagwandas Shah has sought interim bail. In March, Bhagwandas and Soni moved the Supreme Court, claiming that the January 8 verdict quashing their remission contradicted a 2002 constitutional order, and sought that the matter be referred to a larger bench for a final decision.

The two convicts, lodged in Godhra sub-jail, claimed that an abnormal situation had emerged where two different coordination benches had given opposing views on the same issue of premature release and the state government’s policy that should apply to their remission.

They argued that while a court on May 13, 2022, had explicitly directed the Gujarat government to consider Shah’s plea for premature release under the state’s July 9, 1992 remission policy, the court that delivered the verdict on January 8, 2024, had held that Maharashtra, not Gujarat, was entitled to grant remission.

The plea contended that the judgment of January 8, 2024, was in direct conflict with the Constitutional Court’s decision in the Rupa Ashok Hurra case of 2002 and should be set aside to avoid any judicial irregularity and future legal uncertainty and chaos as to the jurisprudence to be applied. It suggested that if a party was not satisfied with a judgment of the Supreme Court on an issue, it should