I want to use compensation money to help victims of rape, communal violence
Photo-Bilkis Bano with Lawyer Shobha Gupta
Our Correspondent / New Delhi
Gujarat infamous rape victim Bilkis Bano Bano has said that she would use the compensation money to raise fund to help victims of rape and communal violence. She said that she will name the fund after Saleha, her three-year-old daughter who was killed by the mob that gangraped her. “We never got back Saleha’s body, we couldn’t even bury her and perform her final rites, and for that I am filled with sorrow till this day,” said Bano. “Perhaps this judgment will help bring some kind of peace.”
On Tuesday the Supreme Court directed the Gujarat government to provide Rs 50 lakh compensation, a job and accommodation to Bilkis Bano, who was raped during 2002 Gujarat riots, she said her faith in the justice system has been restored.
“SC understood my pain, what I went through,” she said at a press conference in Delhi on Wednesday.Her advocate Shobha Gupta said the compensation amount is probably one of the largest to be granted to a victim of sexual assault and rape in the country.
Expressing grief about her lost daughter, Bano acknowledged the Supreme Court’s decision and said, “We never got back Saleha’s body, we couldn’t even bury her and perform her final rites, and for that I am filled with sorrow till this day. Her spirit is still wandering and I want for her to be at peace. Perhaps this judgment will help bring some kind of peace. The court has accepted the sadness that I have had to bear, and the suffering that I’ve gone through. That this has been recognised is a big thing for me… I have had a very long struggle of 17 years but I have always believed that I would get justice. I had belief in the Constitution and the legal system.”
Recollecting the agonizing incident when she was brutally raped while she was 5 months pregnant, Bano said that her now 15-year old daughter Hazra wishes to become a lawyer. “She had decided a few years back that she wants to be a lawyer. I want her to be educated and become a lawyer, so that she can help other women at the Supreme Court,” said Bano.
Bilkis had earlier declined to accept the Rs 5-lakh compensation awarded by the state and had sought its enhancement. Later, a special leave petition was filed in the SC by Bano’s advocate Ms. Shobha Gupta seeking compensation for “damages to her Constitutional right to life; right to bodily integrity; right to be protected by the State; and right to seek justice for wrongs suffered by her.”
Bano’s struggle for justice started after the state police dismissed her case citing lack of evidence. In December 2003, the case was handed over to the CBI who then arrested all the accused named by Bano. In May 2017, the Bombay HC upheld the conviction and life imprisonment of 11 people, while setting aside the acquittal of seven people, including the policemen and doctors. In March, the SC directed the Gujarat government to initiate disciplinary action against police officials charged with investigating the case, whom the Bombay HC had found guilty of destroying evidence, overturning the special court order. The state then stopped the pension benefits of two officials, and demoted IPS officer RS Bhagora by two ranks.