“…the appellant was repeatedly gangraped and was a mute and helpless witness to her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter being butchered to death. This factual position is undisputed and unchallenged in light of the findings of the trial court upheld by the High Court and this Court.…[she] is without any home and lives with her daughter who was born after the incident. She has been coerced to live life of a nomad and as an orphan, and is barely sustaining herself on the charity of NGOs, having lost company of her family members. The gruesome and horrific acts of violence have left an indelible imprint on her mind which will continue to torment and cripple her.” – Supreme Court judgment of April 23, 2019, awarding ₹50 lakh in compensation to Bilkis Yaqoob Rasool aka Bilkis Bano
The facts are not in dispute here. After a long and tortuous road, following the intervention of the Supreme Court, in January 2008 a judge in Mumbai handed down life imprisonment to 11 persons for the murder of 14 innocent persons and the gang rape of Bilkis Bano herself. The verdict was upheld by the Bombay High Court in May 2017.
The case (along with several others) was transferred out of Gujarat at the behest of the Supreme Court in 2004 after many activists pointed out that there was little chance of a fair investigation in this and other cases of rioting and murder that happened after the burning of the train in Godhra, Gujarat, in February 2002.
