Days after the prisoners in the Bilkispano case surrendered to jail authorities on a Supreme Court order, one of them was granted five-day parole by the Gujarat High Court following the death of his father-in-law, a police official said. Friday.

Pradip Modhiya, a resident prisoner of Dahod district, has been paroled from Godhra district jail.

The Supreme Court last month revoked the reduced sentences of all 11 convicts in the 2002 post-Godhra riots case involving the gang rape of Gujarat woman Bilkis Bano and murder of seven of her relatives.

“The Gujarat High Court has granted five-day parole to a prisoner, Pradip Modhiya, in connection with the death of his father-in-law. This is a matter between the court and the jail as they are in judicial custody,” said Visakha Jain, deputy inspector general of police, Dahod district.

“He didn’t have to report it to the police,” she said. Sources in the Godhra district jail, where the inmates are lodged, said they had paroled Modia on the High Court order.

Justice M R. Mengdey granted Modia five days’ parole instead of the one-month parole he had requested in his application to the Supreme Court citing the death of his father-in-law.

In August 2022, the Gujarat government accepted commutation applications from 11 convicts serving life sentences under the 1992 policy on the grounds that they had “behaved well” during their incarceration and were therefore released early.

The prisoners were from Sinwad and Landikpur villages under Sinwad taluka of Dahod district, adjacent to Panchmahal district where Godhra is located.

The Supreme Court on January 8 had quashed the reduced sentence granted to convicts by the Gujarat government while slamming the state for “collusion” with the accused and abuse of discretion.

Subsequently, the Supreme Court ordered the prisoners, who were released from the Godhra district jail on Independence Day 2022 after serving 14 years in jail, to return to the jail within two weeks. They surrendered to Godhra jail authorities on January 21.

The Supreme Court quashed the commutation order and ruled that the Gujarat government had no jurisdiction to release the convict early as the trial in the 2002 case was held in Maharashtra.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from associated news agency – PTI)