Three of the 11 men convicted in the Bilkis Bano case moved the Supreme Court, on Wednesday, January 17, seeking an extension of four weeks to surrender before the jail. The apex court has agreed to hear the petitions on an urgent basis, and has directed the registry to seek permission from the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to constitute the same bench that passed the January 8 orders directing the 11 convicts to surrender back in jail within two weeks.

According to a LiveLaw report, the petition was filed by Govindbhai Nai, Mitesh Chimanlal Bhatt, and Ramesh Rupabhai Chandana. While Govindbhai sought four weeks extension claiming that he was the sole caretaker of his elderly parents, Ramesh and Mitesh sought for six weeks each, with the former citing his son’s marriage and the latter about the impending harvest season. Senior Advocate V Chitambaresh, who appeared for the convicts on January 18, sought the court to list the matter on January 19 citing that the date of surrender was January 21.

However, Justice Nagarathna said that a bench comprising herself and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan – the same bench that overturned the remission orders – had to be constituted, and issued a direction to the registry to seek orders for the same from the CJI. During the hearing, the bench was also informed that the other convicts would file similar petitions on January 19, to which the bench said that they would be clubbed and heard together, LiveLaw reported.

Read: Who is BV Nagarathna, the SC judge who sent Bilkis Bano rapists back to jail

The SC, earlier this month, quashed the remission of sentence and release of the 11 men convcited for the gang rape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of seven of her family members including her three-year-old daughter during the Gujarat Riots in 2002. The apex court had said that the state of Gujarat had no jurisdiction to pass the remission orders. The court had further pointed out that the petition based on which the SC, in May 2022, directed the Gujarat government to grant remission was “obtained by fraud”. The court had also ruled that the Maharashtra state government was the appropriate authority to consider the remission applications.

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