The Bombay High Court today commenced the final hearing on the appeals filed by 11 people convicted in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gangrape case and also on the petition by CBI seeking death penalty for three of them. Eleven men, who were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court on January 21, 2008 for gangraping Bilkis and murdering seven of her family members in the aftermath of the 2002 Godhra riots, had approached the high court challenging their conviction and sought quashing of the trial court's order.

The prosecuting agency CBI had also filed an appeal in the high court seeking death penalty for three of the 11 convicts. A division bench of Justices V K Tahilramani and Mridula Bhatkar started final hearing on the appeals while rapping CBI counsel Hiten Venegaonkar for not being "prepared".