‘As a woman, I feel Bilkis Bano’s pain,’ says TRS leader Kavitha

The TRS MLC wants the Supreme Court to intervene in the case and also the Gujarat government to rescind the release order.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi has joined the other opposition parties to condemn the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Gujarat for remitting the sentence of 11 persons convicted for rape and murder in the Bilkis Bano case. In a statement, senior TRS leader and MLC K. Kavitha said that as a woman she feels the pain of Bilkis Bano who was gang-raped and her four-year-old daughter was killed.

The decision to release the culprits in such heinous cases, she added on Independence Day highlights the insensitivity of the BJP government in the state. The release of the 11 convicts, she added, is also against the central government’s own guidelines that explicitly mentioned that rapists and prisoners with life sentences should not be pardoned. “This decision is not only against the law, but against humanity,” she added.

Worst is the way the convicts were felicitated on their release. ”It is imperative to stop this extremely dangerous tradition before it takes the form of a legacy,” Ms. Kavitha said. She urged the Supreme Court to intervene in the case and also the Gujarat government to rescind the release order.