URL RewriteRule in .htaccess for index.php query parameters

Example URL's:- - www.domain.com/index.php?bob - www.domain.com/index.php?jane - www.domain.com/index.php?fred Need rewriting like:- - www.domain.com/bob - www.domain.com/jane - www.domain.com/fred Have tried with many variations now but the closest I can get to is:- - www.domain.com/?bob - www.domain.com/?jane - www.domain.com/?fred The below in .htaccess achieves this... ``` RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?$1 [L,QSA] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s(.*)/index\.php [NC] RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L] ``` Please could someone point out what I need to modify to bin the ? (question mark) in the URL? Edit Just noticed that since applying the answer given by anubhava below that robots.txt for example doesn't resolve to the .txt file but just displays the homepage. .htaccess below:- ``` RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/+index\.php\?([^\s&]+) [NC] RewriteRule ^ %1? [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ index.php?route=feed/google_sitemap [L] RewriteRule ^googlebase.xml$ index.php?route=feed/google_base [L] RewriteRule ^download/(.*) /index.php?route=error/not_found [L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d #pos1 RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ index.php?$1 [L,QSA] <-- RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|js|css) RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA] #pos2 ``` If I add the <-- line in pos1, the robots.txt URL returns a 404 page not found error. If I add the <-- line in pos2, the robots.txt URL just displays the homepage. Edit2 In the meantime, I have excluded `robots.txt` from rewrites by adding the following under `Rewrite Base /`:- ``` RewriteRule ^robots.txt - [L] ```