134 ex-bureaucrats to CJI: Send back Bilkis' rapists to jail

New Delhi, August 27

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As many as 134 former civil servants on Saturday wrote an open letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) against the premature release of 11 men who were jailed for the gangrape of Bilkis Bano. They requested him to rectify this “horrendously wrong decision”.

They asked the CJI to rescind the order of remission passed by the Gujarat Government and send the 11 persons convicted of gangrape and murder back to the jail to serve out their life sentence.

“Like the overwhelming majority of people in our country, we are aghast at what happened in Gujarat a few days ago, on the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence,” it said. Former Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung, former Cabinet Secretary KM Chandrasekhar, former Foreign Secretaries Shivshankar Menon and Sujatha Singh and former Home Secretary GK Pillai were among the 134 signatories to the letter, written under the aegis of the Constitutional Conduct Group.

The former civil servants said the release of the convicts has “outraged the nation”.

Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five months pregnant when she was gangraped while fleeing the riots that broke out after the Godhra train burning in 2002.