The Supreme Court will from August 7 hear for final disposal the petitions challenging the release of the 11 lifers convicted of gang-raping Bilkis Bano and murdering seven members of her family during the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan on Monday granted three weeks to the convicts to file their responses to the pleas — from Bilkis and others — that have sought revocation of the Gujarat government’s remission of their sentences.

The court noted that following its May 9 order, notices had been served on the accused through registered post or newspaper publications, and that this had not been disputed by solicitor-general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Gujarat government, or the convicts’ lawyers.

The bench also gave a week’s time to the PIL petitioners — CPM leader Subhashini Ali, two others and Trinamul MP MahuaMoitra — to file their counters to the convicts’ responses.

However, after Bilkis’s advocate Shoba Gupta said that a four-week wait was too long, the bench decided to hear the matter from August 7.

Initially, some of the convicts — all of them released by the Gujarat government on August 15 last year with the Centre’s consent — had kept claiming that notices had not been served on them. Some of their lawyers said their clients were not at home and their whereabouts were unknown.

This had on May 2 prompted the bench of Justices K.M. Joseph and Nagarathna, which was dealing with the matter at the time, to express anguish that some lawyers were trying to avoid the bench, aware that Justice Joseph was to retire soon.

On May 9, the court directed that notices be published in an English and a Gujarati newspaper to secure the responses of those released convicts who claimed that notices had not been served on them.

Justice Joseph retired on June 16 and the bench was reconstituted with Justice Bhuyan.

At the last hearing, the Centre and the Gujarat government had in a turnaround offered to place before the court all the documents relating to the decision to remit the sentences.

Both governments had earlier opposed a court order to share the records and indicated they intended to move a review petition against it.

The life sentences were remitted after the apex court bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Vikram Nath (both now retired) had on May 13 last year directed the Gujarat government to consider a plea for release moved by one of the convicts, Radheshyam Bhagwandas Shah.

Radheshyam had approached the apex court after the Gujarat High Court ruled that the Maharashtra government alone had the power to consider the convicts’ release since the trial and convictions had taken place in a Mumbai court.

Bilkis had moved two petitions — a review plea against the May 13 order and a writ petition against the remissions themselves. The review plea was dismissed.

Now the apex court will hear her writ petition and the PIL pleas from Ali, Moitra and others.