The Supreme Court will at 1.30pm on Tuesday take up Gujarat riot victim Bilkis Bano’s review petition against a May 13 judgment that she believes paved the way for her rapists’ release. The matter will be heard in judges’ chambers by the bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Vikram Nath, which had delivered the May 13 judgment.

Bilkis had sought an open court hearing — although review pleas are conventionally heard in judges’ chambers, without access to lawyers or litigants — when she moved her review plea on November 30 before a bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. But Justice Chandrachud made it clear that day, and again on Monday, that a decision on open hearing could be taken only by the bench headed by Justice Rastogi.

The official cause list released by the Supreme Court on Monday night mentioned the listing of Bilkis’s plea, after her counsel had earlier in the day repeated her request before a bench headed by Justice Chandrachud for an urgent (and open-court) hearing of her client’s review plea.

Bilkis’s review petition contests the May 13 judgment that directed the Gujarat government to consider the plea of one of the 11 life convicts, Radheyshyam, for release under the state government’s 1992 remission policy. Bilkis has also filed a writ petition challenging the Gujarat government’s August 10 remission order that led to all the 11 rape-and-murder convicts to be released on August 15. She says the order violated her fundamental rights because the mass release threatens her security and that of her family.

On November 30, Justice Chandrachud had said the review petition would have to come up first, and only before the bench headed by Justice Rastogi. Bilkis had filed her petitions after the convicts questioned the maintainability of similar petitions moved earlier by public-spirited citizens on the ground that they were not the victim. Bilkis’s review petition says Radheyshyam had concealed several incriminating facts that she would now place before the court.

It argues that Maharashtra and not Gujarat was the appropriate government to decide on remission since Maharashtra had been the prosecuting government. Her writ petition says: “The en masse premature release of the convicts... has shaken conscience of the society and resulted in a number of agitations across the country. This Hon’ble Court has already declared that en masse remissions are not permissible and that remission cannot be sought or granted as a matter of right of the convict without examining the case of each convict individually based on their peculiar facts and role played by them in the crime.”