Almost two years after the accused were jailed for the gang rape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has appealed to the Bombay High Court, asking for the death sentence for three of the convicts.

The agency has asked that the life sentences awarded to the three — Jaswantbhai Nai, Govindbhai Nai and Shailesh Bhatt — be enhanced to death sentences due to the brutality of their crime.

The Nais reportedly gang-raped Bilkis — six months pregnant at the time — and Bhatt smashed Bilkis’ three-year-old daughter to the ground.

In January 2008, a special CBI court had awarded the life sentence to 11 of the accused.

Head constable Somabhai Gori was sentenced to three years rigorous imprisonment for fudging the first information report filed by Bilkis.

Five policemen and a doctor couple were acquitted after the CBI failed to connect them to the accused.

Hindustan Times had reported in January 2008, on how the CBI may have indirectly saved the accused from the death penalty by failing to prove this as “a rarest of rare” crime.

A death sentence is normally awarded only in what the courts call a “rarest of rare” crime.

“Life imprisonment is a rule, the death sentence is an exception and the onus is on the prosecution to show how the case qualifies as this exception,” then special judge U. D. Salvi had observed.

At the time, the CBI had failed to prove that the massacre was pre-planned. “There is no evidence to show that the accused pursued Bilkis and her family from village to village from the time they left their village, Randhikpur,” Salvi had observed.