All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi has criticised the Bombay High Court's order in the Bilkis Bano case and urged the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to re-appeal demanding death sentence for the convicts.
Dubbing the High Court's order as 'unfair' Owaisi took to Twitter to vent his anger in the regard.
"# Double Standards Death Penalty Bilkis case Accused raped killed her 3 yr daughter ,mother,sister,14 others No Death WHY CBI must Appeal," tweeted Owaisi.
"Yesterday the Honourable Supreme Court said Death penalty for raping and killing 4 year old why not for Bilkis Bano accused," he added.
The Bombay High Court yesterday ruled out death penalty to three out of 11 people accused of in the brutal gang-rape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The CBI said that five new convicts in this case are police officers and are currently convicted under Sections 201 and 218 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Earlier this week, the High Court also set aside acquittal of five persons, including doctors and policemen, and convicted them for tampering of evidence in the case.
The investigating agency had appealed against the acquittal of five Gujarat Police officers, who connived with the convicts by fudging documents and compromising the inquest report.
Last year, the CBI named it as the rarest of rare cases and said that death penalty must be awarded to three convicts.
The 11 convicts, who were sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court in 2008, had moved the Gujarat High Court against their conviction.
The Supreme Court later moved the case from the Gujarat High Court to Bombay High Court, which upheld the conviction of the 11.
On March 1, 2002, Bilkis Bano was gang-raped and left for dead alongside 14 members of her family, including her three-year-old daughter, during the Gujarat riots. She was then five months pregnant, when Hindu rioters attacked her in Vadodara .
In 2008, she won the first-ever conviction in a riot-related rape case against 13 men.
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