DNA Edit: Landmark judgment – Bilkis case reveals justice is slow, but sure

The wheels of justice may move slowly in India, but move they do. The Supreme Court on Tuesday finally provided monetary relief to a 2002 Gujarat gang rape survivor, Bilkis Bano. The apex court ordered the Gujarat government to award Rs 50 lakh as compensation, a job and accommodation, concluding her 17-year-old fight for justice. The victim had refused to accept Rs 5 lakh as compensation and approached the top court in 2017, seeking exemplary recompense from the state government. The apex court has demonstrated that despite the bottlenecks, there is justice at the end of the tunnel. For similar victims of violence, it is a landmark case, and one that sets a precedent for the lower courts and judiciary to follow. 

Bilkis’s story is indeed a sordid tale of what went wrong in Gujarat in March 2002. Then 21, she was gang-raped during the post-Godhra riots and left to die. Fourteen members of her family, including her two-year-old daughter, were killed. But all the adversities in the world could not deter Bilkis from fighting for justice. She registered a case against her alleged assailants, approached the National Human Rights Commission and went all the way to the Supreme Court, displaying incredible grit against all odds. A total of 11 men were found guilty of the assault and sentenced to life imprisonment. The rest, they say, is history. 

Elsewhere in the country, victims of communal violence have not been that fortunate. Given the slow pace of investigation, influence of rioters and the complex judicial process, it is often a difficult task for victims to get any reasonable settlement from the government. An Amnesty International report in 2017 pointed out that five years after the communal riots in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts of western Uttar Pradesh, compensation was yet to be awarded to families, who suffered casualties or were displaced. On October 26, 2013, the state government announced that it would provide a one-time compensation of Rs 5 lakh for relocation and rehabilitation to residents of nine villages worst hit by communal violence. In addition, Rs 20,000 was promised to the injured and Rs 50,000 for the seriously injured. For these Muzzafarnagar victims, the Bilkis case is a standing example of how perseverance and courage pays off. 

Law enforcement agencies can take a more realistic view of awarding compensation to riot victims, now that the apex court has set the high benchmark. Little, stingy amounts to those who have suffered heavily on account of communal strife, is no deterrent to the instigators of riots, these including both State and non-State players. The state of affairs is so sordid that compensation for victims of anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in Delhi took quite a long time coming. In some instances, it still has not arrived, more than three decades after the violence. The Bilkis case is a lodestar in the sense that it has opened the doors for victims of communal violence. By forcing the state government concerned to award a high compensation, it has raised the costs of those involved in sectarian violence.