NEW DELHI: Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking stronger laws and policies restraining remission and parole of rape convicts. Referring to the release of the rapists of Bilkis Bano and the parole given to rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim, she demanded that they be sent back to jail. Bilkis Bano was 21 years old when she was gang-raped during the riots in Gujarat in 2002. The rapists not only inflicted utmost brutality on the five-month pregnant, but also killed seven of her family members, including her three-year-old child, Maliwal wrote.
Finally in 2008, a sessions court in Mumbai convicted 11 persons for gangrape and murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment. However, on August 15 this year, the rapists were let off by the Gujarat government citing the 1992 remission policy that allowed prisoners to apply for reduction of their sentence.
“Apparently, this was done despite CBI and Special Judge (CBI) raising objections against the release of the convicts. The media has also reported that some of the rapists of Bilkis Bano were charged for crimes such as ‘outraging the modesty of women’ when they had been released on parole.
Despite this, their sentence was reduced as even the Government of India, recommended the premature release of the convicts,” she said. In a separate case, the Haryana Government recently released on parole Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim who has been convicted of rape and murder and is serving a life sentence in a jail in Rohtak, she said. The panel asked for review of the laws and policies pertaining to parole and furlough.