Bilkis Bano, the survivor of 2002 Gujarat riots gang-rape said she “will stand and fight again, against what is wrong and for what is right.” Bilkis has moved to Supreme Court challenging the remission and release of 11 convicts related to the case of her gangrape and murder of seven family members during the riots.
21-year-old and five-month pregnant Bano was gangraped while fleeing the Gujarat riots in 2002. In the seven family members killed, her three-year-old daughter was one among them.
Stating that it has “shaken the conscience of society,” she has challenged the premature release of the convicts by the Gujarat government on 15 August in her two separate petitions.
“The decision to once again stand up and knock on the doors of justice was not easy for me. For a long time, after the men who destroyed my entire family and my life were released, I was simply numb. I was paralysed with shock and with fear for my children, my daughters, and above all, paralysed by loss of hope,” Bano said in a statement issued on Thursday.
“But, the spaces of my silence were filled with other voices; voices of support from different parts of the country that have given me hope in the face of unimaginable despair; and made me feel less alone in my pain. I cannot express in words what this support has meant to me,” Bano said adding that the support to her cause from different parts of the country has helped her in rekindling her faith in humanity and renewed her courage to believe again in the idea of justice.
“So, I will stand and fight again, against what is wrong and for what is right. I do this today for myself, for my children, and for women everywhere”, she said.
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Rabia Shireen is a Staff Reporter at The Cognate.
