The Supreme Court has dismissed Bilkis Bano’s review petition against a May 13 judgment that cleared the decks for the Gujarat government to release the 11 life convicts who had raped her and murdered seven of her family members during the 2002 riots.

The bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Vikram Nath, who had delivered the May 13 judgment, declined to entertain Bilkis’s plea for an open-court hearing of her plea. Review petitions are conventionally heard within the closed chambers of the judges without access to lawyers, litigants or the media.

However, Bilkis can still harbour hopes since her writ petition challenging the Gujarat government’s release of the lifers is yet to be decided by the apex court.

While the apex court dismissed her review petition on December 13, the formal order was uploaded on its website only on Saturday evening.

“Application for listing in open court is rejected. Delay condoned.... In our opinion, there appears no error apparent on the face of record, which may call for review of the judgment dated 13th May, 2022,” the order said.

It said that “none of the (past) judgments” that Bilkis had relied on “are of any assistance to the review petitioner”.

The May 13 order had, on a plea from one of the convicts, Radheyshyam Bhagwandas Shah aka Lala Vakil, asked the Gujarat government to consider remission of his sentence. The state government ordered the release of the convicts on August 10 and freed them on August 15, the 75th anniversary of India’s independence.

Radheyshyam had moved the apex court after the Gujarat government and the state high court had declined to entertain his plea for remission on the ground that the appropriate authority was the government of Maharashtra as that is where the trial had been conducted.

As for the writ petition, Justice Bela M. Trivedi of the apex court had on December 13 recused herself from hearing the case without citing any specific reason.

Bilkis had moved both petitions after the convicts had challenged similar pleas filed by a few public-spirited citizens by arguing they were not the victim and had no standing in the matter.

In her review petition, Bilkis had contended that the May 13 order should be recalled since the Supreme Court had in several earlier judgments ruled that the government of the state where the trial was conducted was the appropriate authority to grant remission of sentences.

She had also argued that Radheyshyam had concealed certain relevant information from the apex court that she now wanted to reveal.

In her writ petition, she has contended that the release of the convicts violates her rights and poses a threat to herself and her family members. She says she herself, her husband and their grown-up daughters and other family members are “shell-shocked” at the release and fear for their safety.

“The en masse premature release of the convicts in much talked about case of Bilkis Bano 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,” her writ petition says.

“When the nation was celebrating its 76th Independence Day, all the convicts were released prematurely and were garlanded and felicitated in full public glare and sweets were circulated and this is how the present petitioner along with the entire nation and the whole world came to know about the shocking news of premature release of all the convicts.”