New Delhi: Two Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs were part of the committee that recommended the release of 11 convicts who had gang-raped Bilkis Bano and killed seven members of her family in the 2002 riots, The Hindu has reported.
Bano, on August 17, issued a statement in which she said that no one enquired about her “safety and well-being before taking such a big and unjust decision.”
BJP legislators C.K. Raolji and Suman Chauhan were part of the committee headed by Godhra Collector and District Magistrate Sujal Mayatra which took the “unanimous decision” to recommend remission to the convicts.
Two other members of the committee are also associated with the BJP. They are social worker and former BJP Godhra municipal councillor Murli Mulchandani and a worker with BJP women’s wing Snehaben Bhatia, according to the newspaper.
Mulchandani was presented by prosecutors as an eyewitness in the Godhra train carnage case in which 59 pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were burnt alive.
Mulchandani, along with eyewitnesses Nitin Pathak and Ranjit Jodha Patel were shown as allegedly having given statements that contradicted their original testimony in a sting operation conducted by a private media outlet. Though, these findings were not admitted by a special fast-track court dealing with the case, the judge himself concluded – based on obvious inconsistencies – that Mulchandani and the other so-called witnesses “cannot be termed as ‘witnesses of truth’ and this court has no option but to discard their evidence in totality.”
This story was originally published in thewire.in . Read the full story here
