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Two sisters from Maharashtra may become the first women to be hanged in India
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, August 14, 2014 | 0 comments
Two Maharashtra women, who were sentenced to death in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them, may become the first women ever to be hanged in India.
President Pranab Mukherjee late last month rejected Renuka Kiran Shinde and her sister Seema Mohan Gavit’s mercy petitions. The buffer period before their hanging – time taken by the state home department to inform all concerned after receiving the note from Rashtrapati Bhavan – ends on Saturday.
The number of people executed in India since Independence is a matter of dispute. Government statistics claim that only 52 people have been executed since independence. However, research by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties indicates that the actual number of executions is in fact much higher, as they have located records of 1,422 executions in the decade from 1953 to 1963 alone. However, there is no record of any woman’s execution.
Renuka and Seema, who partnered their mother Anjanabai Gavit to kidnap the kids and push them into begging and killed some of them after they stopped being productive, are currently lodged at the Yerwada jail in Pune. Anjanabai passed away during the trial, and the sisters’ father Kiran Shinde turned approver and was acquitted.
The President has also rejected the mercy petition of Rajendra Wasnik, who was sentenced to death for raping and killing a three-year-old in Amravati in March 2007. Wasnik had lured the girl with the promise of buying her biscuits before sexually assaulting and eventually killing her.
Source: The Times of India
