The Bombay High Court has turned down the CBI's request for the death penalty to three men accused of gangraping Bilkis Bano, a 19-year-old pregnant woman, and brutally murdering 14 members of her family, including her three-old daughter, in Randhikpur near Ahmedabad, during the Gujarat riots of 2002. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had told court that this was a "rarest of rare case" and that the death penalty must be awarded to three out of 11 people convicted in the case, to send out a "stern message." A trial court in Mumbai had sentenced all of them to life imprisonment, which the High Court upheld today.
