All the 11 men convicted in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gangrape case are under ‘police watch’ and are not missing, said a senior police official. The Supreme Court had recently refused to give more time to surrender to the 11 convicts.
“They have been under police watch ever since the apex court gave its verdict, quashing the remission granted by the Gujarat government,” Assistant Superintendent of Police, Limkheda division, Bishakha Jain said.
“We contacted all of them on that day itself and it did not appear that they had any intention of going incommunicado after the verdict.”
The convicts belong to Singvad and Randhikpur villages of Dahod district.
“They knew that they had to surrender, and they voluntarily came to the police station after the SC order to inform us about their whereabouts. It is not true that they have gone missing,” said the IPS officer.
The Supreme Court had asked the convicts, released prematurely on Independence Day in 2022, to surrender before jail authorities by January 21.
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan noted that the reasons cited by applicants to seek postponement of surrender and report back to jail “have no merit inasmuch as those reasons in no way prevent them from complying with our directions.”
The convicts had cited reasons such as health issues, impending surgery, marriage in the family and harvest work.
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