Bilkis Bano, now in her 40s, reacted with a sense of satisfaction over the judgement. "Today is truly the New Year for me. I have wept tears of relief. I have smiled for the first time in over a year and half. I have hugged my children.

It feels like a stone the size of a mountain has been lifted from my chest, and I can breathe again," she said in a statement issued through her lawyer Shobha Gupta. "This is what justice feels like. I thank the honourable Supreme Court of India for giving me, my children and women everywhere, this vindication and hope in the promise of equal justice for all," she said.