Death row sisters seek reprieve

Mumbai: Two women on death row for murdering five children have lodged a last ditch appeal after the President rejected their mercy plea, clearing the way for them to become the first women executed in post-independence India. Renuka Shinde and her step sister Seema Gavit were convicted in 2001 of kidnapping 13 children, forcing them to join a gang of thieves and murdering at least five of them.

The children were reportedly recruited into a life of petty crime as  by their late mother, and used the children to distract their victims while the sisters robbed them. Shinde, 45, and Gavit, 39, were found guilty of kidnapping the 13 children in the western state of Maharashtra. They were initially accused of murdering nine of their victims, but prosecutors were only able to prove that they killed five.

The Supreme Court upheld their sentence in 2006 and last month President Pranab Mukherjee rejected their appeal. Legally the sisters have now exhausted all avenues to appeal against their sentence. But on Monday their lawyer said he would lodge a petition with the High Court in Mumbai, where they were originally convicted, on the grounds that the 13-year delay in carrying out the sentence was excessive.

“There has been an inordinate delay in carrying out the death sentence. So I will pray to the courts to commute the same into life behind bars,” said Sudeep Jaiswal, who has represented the two sisters since 2010.

In a landmark ruling this year, the Supreme Court had said “inordinate and inexplicable” delays in carrying out executions were grounds for commuting death sentences.