Six years after a pregnant Bilkis Bano was gangraped, her baby daughter killed and 13 of her relatives allegedly murdered, a special CBI court in Mumbai today sentenced 11 persons to life imprisonment for one of the most gruesome incidents of violence in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The twelfth convict in the case, Somabhai Gori, a policeman who was found guilty of shielding the accused, has been sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment.

The in-camera trial was shifted out of Gujarat on the orders of the Supreme Court after reports of threats and intimidation of witnesses. The CBI probe involved exhumation of bodies whose heads were severed after post-mortem to evade identification.

Holding that the case does not fall under the “rarest of rare cases”, special CBI judge U D Salvi rejected special public prosecutor R K Shah’s plea for death sentences to three persons held guilty of raping Bilkis.

Salvi also observed that in a case of communal riots, “every individual has a separate agenda... Many join for looting property, some join to satisfy their lust and some join for the killing.”

Immediately after the verdict, Bilkis Bano asked the Gujarat government to reassure her family of security. “My family and I are still living in fear. It is the duty of the Gujarat government to assure us of safety,” she told reporters in New Delhi.

Although she felt that justice had been delivered in the case, she said the seven persons acquitted should have also been punished. Doctors and policemen who connived with the rioters should not have walked free, she said. “This judgment does not mean the end of hatred but it does mean that somewhere, somehow justice can prevail. I am ready to work closely with CBI in other cases too,” she said.

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