Mumbai: Intellectuals, lawyers and rights activists have welcomed the Mumbai session court's verdict on Friday in the Bilkis Bano case, holding 13 people guilty, and acquitting seven others.
Stating that the justice has come a little late in the day, leading film director and rights activist Mahesh Bhatt said: ''As long as judiciary keeps on restoring the belief of the people that it will not let the guilty go off the hook, there is hope that our claim of being a pluralistic society will remain there."
Bhatt said, "All the applause should go to Bilkis for fighting the case all through for her dignity."
According to eminent Constitutional lawyer Niloufer Bhagwat, the conviction establishes the complicity of the state government in riots.
"My view has always been that whenever and wherever massacres of such nature take place, they are never without the complicity of the power that be," she said.
Reacting to the judgment, President of the Mumbai wing of Movement for Peace and Justice, an NGO, Dr Azimmudden said that the verdict has definitely renewed minorities, especially Muslims, faith in the judiciary of the country.
"We respect the judgment as it has once again established the supremacy of the judiciary in the country. The judgment also brings
hope to the other victims who are fighting for justice in similar cases all over the country," he added.
Social activist Teesta Seetalvad described it as "a victory for the victims of Gujarat genocide of 2002."
"I think any victory in any case related to the Gujarat genocide of 2002 is a victory for the victims," she said.
Seetalvad said the courage of Bilkis Bano should be 'celebrated' as much as her "complete determination to get to the bottom of it and to fight for justice".
She said Bilkis had to change her house 300 times and accused the Gujarat government of threatening witnesses in riots cases and trying to do everything to "resist an independent inquiry into them".
Accusing the politicians involved in the riots of trying to influence the criminal justice system, Seetalvad said it was necessary to move the trial of riots cases away from the scene of the crime in order to insulate the riots victims and the trial.
A special court in Mumbai convicted 12 persons, including a police official, in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case, culminating a trial that was transferred out of Gujarat in the wake of intimidation of witnesses.
Seven persons were acquitted by the court due to lack of evidence while one died during the course of the trial.
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