SC awards death penalty to woman and her lover

Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN | May 16, 2015, 07.48AM IST

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday imposed death sentences on a woman and her lover who wiped out her entire family -- parents, two brothers, sister-in-law and two minors - after heavily sedating them to remove opposition to their love affair and also to grab the family property. 

Supreme Court on Friday imposed death sentences on a woman and her lover who wiped out her entire family.

The apex court, which is generally lenient in awarding sentence to women convicts and of late has been increasingly reluctant to impose capital punishment, was shocked by the brutality of the crime. 

A bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justices S A Bobde and Arun Mishra dismissed the appeals of Shabnam and her lover Saleem and upheld the death penalty imposed on them by a UP trial court which was confirmed by the Allahabad HC. 

Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Dattu said, "Here is a case where the daughter Shabnam, who has been brought up in an educated and independent environment by her family and was respectfully employed as a teacher, influenced by the love and lust of her paramour has committed this brutal parricide (act of killing one's father, mother or other close relative), exterminating seven lives including that of a 10-month-old innocent child." 

Shabnam, who was pregnant at the time of crime, had conspired with her unemployed lover Saleem and had served tea heavily laced with sedatives to her family members on the night of April 14, 2008. Saleem entered the house at Bahman Garhi in Amroha and the two slit the throats of the seven family members. She strangulated the 10-month-old child. 

The CJI said, "Not only did she forget her love and duty towards her family, but also perpetrated the multiple homicides in her own house so as to fulfill her desire to be with the co-accused Saleem and grab the property leaving no heir but herself. Both the appellants wrench the heart of our society where family is an institution of love and trust, which they have disrespected and corrupted for the sake of their love affair." 

Amicus curiae Dushyant Parashar pleaded with the court that Shabnam, who was pregnant at the time of crime, was now the mother of a five-year-old child, who would be orphaned if both she and Saleem were awarded death penalty. He had pleaded for life sentence for the couple citing their young age. 

The court rejected the plea. It said Indian society has experienced through centuries that daughters were more caring than sons towards their parents and feel the pinch more when the relationship with parents go awry. 

It said a daughter was a care-giver and a supporter, a gentle hand and responsible voice, an embodiment of the cherished values of our society and in whom a parent placed blind faith and trust. The bench said society abhorred parricide as a person trusted blindly could not be seen to murder those who trusted him/her. 

Parricide assumes indescribable ghastliness when a teacher-daughter murders her teacher-father and her entire family, the bench said. "It is the combined concoction of all aggravating circumstances, that is, victims of the crime, motive for commission of murders, manner of execution, magnitude of crime and remorseless attitude of the appellants-accused that stands before us in this case," the bench said and rejected the plea for award of life sentence to the convicts. 

Past sentences

* Renuka Shinde and her step-sister Seema Gavit were convicted in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children, forcing them to join a gang of thieves and murdering at least five of them. Shinde, 45, and Gavit, 39, were found guilty of kidnapping the 13 children in 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. The President rejected their mercy pleas last year. 

* Sonia and her husband were awarded death penalty by the SC in 2007 for murdering her father, mother, sister, step-brother and the entire family including three young children - one 45 days old, another two-and-a-half-year-old and the third four years old to resist her father's decision to give the property to her stepbrother. 

* Shabnam is the third to be awarded death penalty in the last decade.

Women's imminent executions likely to revive death penalty debate in India

By Andie Noonan and Joanna McCarthy

Updated about 4 hours ago

The imminent execution of the first women to receive the death penalty in India since independence is likely to revive long-standing debate in the country about its use of capital punishment. The two sisters, Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit, kidnapped 13 children under the age of five in the early 1990s and brutally murdered at least seven of them in the state of Maharashtra. Human rights lawyer Asim Sarode, who worked on the sisters' mercy plea, does not expect the executions to take place until at least next month.

Although personally opposed to the death penalty, Mr Sarode said given the nature of the sisters' crimes, he did not believe the Indian public would be in a hurry to see the laws change in this case.

"India as a society is not very much concerned about the way of punishment," he told the ABC. "They are of very general thought that punishment should be hardened and it will create [an] impact and fear on people not to commit offences. This is a very traditional way of thinking." Some, however, have spoken out against the sentence. The MP for the sisters' home state of Kolhapur, Dhananjay Mahadik, told The Independent that while the women's crimes were "very serious", he believed women should not face the death penalty. The sisters' case has also been championed by human rights groups which have long campaigned for capital punishment to be abandoned.

"We oppose the death penalty altogether because it's irreversible, inhumane," Meenakshi Ganguly from Human Rights Watch told the ABC. "Every time there is a serious incident like the gang rape in Delhi in 2012, almost always the demand in the protest is for a hanging. "That to me is the concern, it is the maximum punishment that anyone can receive so therefore people ask for it when they're outraged by the crime." But the punishment also has many supporters in India's legal and political system. "Nobody values anything more than his or her life, and any system that takes away your life will terrify you," Pinky Anand, a Supreme Court lawyer and politician, told the New York Times last year.  "It is human psychology in addition to criminal jurisprudence."

'Rarest of the rare cases'

While the Supreme Court has long stipulated that death sentences should be reserved for "the rarest of the rare cases", there have been a number of high-profile executions in recent years. In 2013, the country executed Muhammad Afzal, who was convicted of plotting the 2001 attack on India's parliament, and in 2012 it hanged Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving gunman of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks which killed 166 people.

In 2013, the scope of the death penalty increased with greater penalties for rapists, introducing the death penalty when a woman dies from her injuries. This followed the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman which sparked violent protests in several cities. Amnesty International has said executions in India are usually carried out without notice and in secret. In a 2013 report, it said the president of India hadrejected the mercy petitions of 18 prisoners that year, the most rejections by any leader for almost 25 years. The group also said information on decisions on mercy petitions was removed from the president's secretariat website. Mr Sarode said the country's Supreme Court asked the government for more certainty, including giving prisoners seven days' notice before they are executed.

Use of capital punishment called into question

The efficacy of capital punishment was already on the public agenda when the women's pleas for clemency were rejected by India's president Pranab Mukherjee last year.

In May, India's Law Commission, which advises the ministry of law and justice, issued a discussion paper asking for public opinion on whether the death penalty should be applied and in what circumstances.

When there's public anger the state tends to think this is a way of showing that they're doing something by executing people. - Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch.

It followed a Supreme Court case which found that "inordinate and inexplicable" delays in carrying out executions were grounds for commuting death sentences, and suggested the Commission could investigate "whether death penalty is a deterrent punishment or is retributive justice or serves an incapacitative goal".

In January, Indian man Surendra Koli had his death sentenced commuted to life in prison on the basis officials took too long to carry out his execution.

He was convicted in 2009 over the gruesome killing of five children in a workers' colony in a middle-class neighbourhood in north Delhi. However, Ms Ganguly says there remains a serious issue as long as the death penalty remains in place. "In fact in the region we've seen that Pakistan, which had a moratorium [on the death penalty], has gone back to hanging a lot of people after the Peshawar attacks," she said. "When there's public anger the state tends to think this is a way of showing that they're doing something by executing people."

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-06/womens-execution-revives-death-penalty-debate-in-india/6059596 [last accessed 06.02.2015] 

Walking dead too long

Bangalore Mirror Bureau | Sep 4, 2014, 10.33 PM IST By:Somasekhar Sundaresan Lengthy process of implementing death sentence doesn't function as retribution or deterrence

Renukabai Shinde - Death row convict, Maharashtra The Supreme Court has ruled that it would start a new tradition of hearing in open court, petitions seeking review of judgments confirming the death penalty. Otherwise, all review petitions are considered by the judges in chamber without another hearing. This decision, yet again underlines the sensitivity in our highest judiciary to the infliction of death by man on man. The futility of capital punishment has often found mention in this column. More recently, rulings of the Supreme Court on the unacceptable length of time between the imposition of a death sentence and execution were lauded - the court has consistently ruled that even a convict sentenced to death enjoys the constitutional protection of the right to life until the last breath. The Supreme Court has documented, with examples, how convicts on death row have gone insane or physically infirm, just waiting to know if they would be put to death or pardoned. Of late, undertrials accused of gruesome crimes that are widely reported in the media have been found dead in prison under mysterious circumstances - typically explained away as suicide, they are recipients of lawless justice meted out the honour code among prison inmates. Expectedly, hardliners rail against such considerations. If a criminal can kill with impunity, they would argue, there should be no reason to spare her from any form of indignity. They would accuse defense lawyers of frustrating execution. A typical line one hears is that it is only in India one experiences delays in execution and the system is broken. The United States of America is often extolled for perceived speed in punishment and the allegedly consequential fear of law in the American society. Nothing could be farther from the truth as is underlined in a judgment handed down just six weeks ago by a Californian court. Striking down a death sentence handed down in 1995 to a rape and murder convict, the court has held the death penalty system in California to be violative of the constitutional protection against imposition of cruel and arbitrary punishment. The court found that since 1978 (when California introduced a new law on capital punishment), over 900 individuals were sentenced to death there. Only 13 have been executed, 63 died of natural causes, 22 committed suicide, and the rest still languish in prison. Indeed, some prison inmates have died of "drug overdose" or "violence in the exercise yard". The review and appeal of a death sentence takes more than 25 years in California. The national average in the US, at over 15 years, is not spectacularly better. Only 17 out of the 748 Californian convicts with a death sentence have had their appellate and review processes run its full course. Since 2006, no execution has taken place. Over 20 per cent of the death row convicts have crossed the age of 60 in prison. The random few who do get executed would have languished for so long that their execution would serve neither the purpose of retribution nor deterrence, the court has observed. "Indeed, the law, and common sense itself, have long recognized, the judgment reasons, "that the deterrent effect of any punishment is contingent upon the certainty and timeliness of its imposition." These observations could well have been about India. Despite the paraphernalia of safeguards, the administration of the death sentence is as damaged in the US as it is in India. The blind faith Indian hardliners have in the US justice system is therefore neither backed by facts nor shared by her constitutional courts. In fact, access to justice is so expensive in the US that even the innocent are incentivized to strike "plea bargains" rather than fight to clear their reputation, relieving prosecutors from having to stand the test of scrutiny. The super-rich settle to save super-expensive litigation costs. The impoverished end up in jail. The quality of legal representation they then get is proportionate to their financial strength, rather than strength of their merits. Our Supreme Court's latest decision on a public review of death sentences is therefore understandable - one has to be truly cautious about consigning any human into the living hell that the death sentence represents. source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com/columns/views/Walking-dead-too-long/articleshow/41721165.cms [last accessed 06.02.2015]

The sons of a woman on death row

Written by Mayura Janwalkar | Pune | Posted: September 1, 2014 12:39 am On a cloudy day in a quiet neighbourhood on Pune’s outskirts, a young man in a puffy jacket and sunglasses rode a red motorcycle on the mushy road leading to his 1BHK rented house. As the 25-year-old, slightly built and shy, dismounted and removed his dark glasses, his three younger stepbrothers waiting inside greeted him. In a house with little furniture except a plastic chair and a table to place a television set, he leant against the wall while the younger ones sat on the floor. “The three of them remember nothing about our mother’s past. They were too young,” he said. Pointing at his youngest brother who is in class IX, he said, “He was only six months old when Mummy was taken to jail. I had to be their mother and father both.” The three younger brothers visit their mother Renuka Shinde and aunt Seema Gavit at Yerwada central prison for 30 minutes every fortnight. A recent change in prison rules, however, no longer permits their elder brother to visit her as his surname doesn’t match. “I have not been able to visit her for seven or eight months,” said the eldest, born of Renuka’s first marriage. The boys know their mother and aunt have been handed the death sentence and that the President has turned down their mercy petition. The half-sisters, set to be the first women to be hanged in the country, have since moved Bombay High Court for commutation citing an inordinate delay in deciding their mercy plea, and the government has told the court that it will not execute them until the matter is disposed of. “I was about 10 years old when we were sent to a children’s remand home in Kolhapur and Mummy, Mavshi (aunt) and Aaji (grandmother) were arrested. That is where we were raised,” said the eldest son.. Renuka and Seema were arrested on November 19, 1996. Along with their mother Anjanabai, since deceased, they were accused of kidnapping 13 children between 1990 and 1996 from various places in Maharashtra, using them to gain sympathy after committing thefts, and later killing many of them. Of nine murders, the sisters and their mother were convicted of five. “I have memories of my mother and my aunt. We all lived together when I was young,” the eldest said. “I am the only one who has read the chargesheet. It’s hard to believe that my mother and aunt could be held guilty of such crimes.” Renuka married Kiran Shinde, her second husband, in 1989. Kiran, who allegedly drove vehicles in which the children were kidnapped, turned approver against the sisters but proceedings against him, too, are pending in Bombay High Court. The boys keep no contact with him. “He never came to visit us at the remand home or anytime after that,” says the second eldest, 22. “A police officer once told me that he lived in Hadapsar. But Hadapsar is such a big town, how were we going to locate him?” While still in a children’s home in Kolhapur, the boys were taken to prison to visit their mother. In 2000, they were moved to a children’s home in Pune’s Shivaji Nagar, which the elder three left after turning 18, followed by the eldest taking custody of the youngest. The eldest brother hopes to graduate in commerce this year through a distance learning course in University of Pune. His marketing job helps cover his rent of Rs 3,500 with scope for savings. His second and third brothers, who studied up to classes IX and X respectively, work as office boys in a builder’s office and live in a one-room-kitchen flat a short distance from their brother’s. “My two elder brothers don’t get along very well. That’s why we live separately,” said the third son, 18. His cellphone started ringing to the tune of Marc Anthony’s Let rain over me. “It’s some English song. I don’t know which one but I like it,” he said. “Our elder brother is very strict,” the second brother said. “He puts all our money in the bank and leaves nothing for us to spend. Whenever I visit Mummy in the jail, I complain to her; she tells me not to fight with him. She worries about all of us. Every time we visit her, she breaks down. My aunt doesn’t talk much.” “My aunt is only seven or eight years older than I am. When all of that happened, I am not sure she even knew what she was doing. She was too young,” said the eldest brother. The second brother added, “Some lawyers had asked us to go to her school in Kothrud and try to get her school-leaving certificate to prove her age but we did not know how to get it.” The brothers rarely step out of Pune and have few friends. “Not too many people ask us about our family. But when they do, we say our mother lives in our village in Kolhapur. Nobody knows she has been in jail so many years,” the third brother said. They had all learnt to cook at the children’s home. “My youngest brother makes the best chapatis and I cook brinjal the best,” said the third. The eldest believes that in a children’s home it is very easy to go down the wrong road, though he adds, “It is entirely upon you. It is what you decide to make of your life. That is why I got my brothers out of there. Now things are all right but if we had our mother to raise us, things would have been different.” He has no elders to find him a bride but he does not believe in arranged marriages. “To register your name and find someone else who has registered is not how marriages should be. I want a partner whom I can tell everything about me and would expect the same from her. I am in no hurry. I leave it to destiny.” Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/maharashtra/the-sons-of-a-woman-on-death-row/ [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Bombay High Court stays death of two sisters until September 9

Thursday, 21 August 2014 - 5:25am IST | Agency: dna Mustafa Plumber The Bombay High Court on Wednesday, stayed the execution of death penalty handed down to two sisters convicted for killing six children and abducting 13, till September 9. The court also noted that the review mercy plea filed by them was maintainable and it could even hear and decide on it. A division bench of Justice V M Kanade and Justice P D Kode, directed the State and the Union government to file within three weeks, their reply explaining the reasons behind the delay in the execution of the death sentence, since the Supreme Court judgment confirming the sentence was passed way back in August 2006. Sisters Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit from Kolhapur, were booked in 1996 for abducting and killing children. The prosecution said the sisters earned their living by making the kidnapped children beg. Those who refused were murdered by the accused. The Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court had confirmed their death sentence. Even the President, in his recent order, refused to grant mercy to the duo. The sisters approached the high court seeking stay of the death sentence and its commutation to life imprisonment. The review mercy petition has also sought quashing and setting aside of the President's order rejecting their mercy plea, and declaring it as "illegal, void and unenforceable". The petition claimed that the delay of eight years in deciding on the mercy plea was a "flagrant violation of Articles 21 and 14 (of the Constitution) and was "unfair, cruel, excessive, unexplained and arbitrary." It said the delay had caused "immense mental torture, emotional and physical agony to the petitioners." Appearing for the sisters, counsel Dr Yug Choudhry cited several judgments of the Supreme Court and other High Courts, putting across the point that even after a mercy petition is rejected the convict can file a review plea on the grounds of delay. He argued that if there arises a cause of action even after the mercy petition is decided then the high courts had the power to review the sentence. Public prosecutor Sandeep Shinde, opposed the petition on the grounds that considering the petition would mean interfering with the apex court order. "When the high court order has merged with the Supreme court order which confirmed the sentence then even if a new cause of action arises it cannot alter the final finding," he said. The high court though, after considering various judgments cited by the petitioners, noted that, "We are of the view that prima facie the petition is maintainable." Shinde also argued that delay cannot be a ground for getting relief in the form of commuting the sentence. To this, the court directed him to file the reply explaining the delay within three weeks. The court adjourned the hearing to September 9. Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-bombay-high-court-stays-death-of-two-sisters-until-september-9-2012389 [last accessed 06.02.2015]

Two sisters from Maharashtra's Kolhapur may become the first women to be hanged in India

Yogesh Naik, Mumbai Mirror | Aug 14, 2014, 11.29AM IST Two Kolhapur 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. The note from Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wasnik arrived at the state home department on Tuesday and the process of informing the convict, his relatives, and the Nagpur jail where he is lodged has been initiated. Desk officer Deepak Jadiye of the home department said no objections have been received yet on the Kolapur sisters' hanging. "We have informed the two convicts, their relatives, the legal remedial cells of the Supreme Court and also the district court about the rejection (of their mercy plea),'' he said. While awarding the death sentence to the sisters in 2001, Judge G L Yedke in Kolhapur had described the nine kids' murders as 'the most heinous', and observed that the two sisters seemed to have enjoyed killing the children. There are currently 24 convicts on death row in Maharashtra, including the three Shakti Mills rapists. All convicts facing death sentences in Maharashtra are moved to Yerwada in Pune or the Nagpur jail as these are the only two prisons in the state that have gallows. Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Two-sisters-from-Maharashtras-Kolhapur-may-become-the-first-women-to-be-hanged-in-India/articleshow/40249975.cms [last accessed 06.02.2015]

President rejected mercy petitions of Nithari killer Surinder Koli and 5 others

19 July 2014

Pranab Mukherjee, the President of India on 18 July 2014 rejected the mercy petitions of Nithari serial killer Surinder Koli and five other death row convicts. These five death row convicts are Renukabai and Seema (Maharashtra), Koli (Uttar Pradesh), Rajendra Pralhadrao Wasnik (Mahasrashtra), Jagdish (Madhya Pradesh) and Holiram Bordoloi (Assam).

The President rejected the mercy petitions of the six death row convicts on the advice of the Union Home Ministry which rejected the mercy petitions of all the convicts on 18 June 2014. The six death row convicts may still challenge the rejection of their mercy petition on the grounds of inordinate delay. In February 2014, the SC bench had commuted the death sentence of 15 convicts to life imprisonment on the grounds of inordinate delay and mental illness. Though the SC bench had not quantified the inordinate delays but in all the cases the delay ranged from 7 to 11 years.

In at least two cases, the gap between upholding of death sentence and rejection of clemency plea is not more than three years so in any case these cases might not qualify under inordinate delay. These relate to upholding of death sentence by SC of Surinder Koli in 2011 and that of Wasnik in 2012. As for the other cases, the death penalty for the two sisters was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2006 and that Holiram Bordoloi in 2005. t will be interestingly to see whether this is viewed as "inordinate" delay on part of the Executive in deciding their mercy pleas.

Source: http://www.jagranjosh.com/current-affairs/president-rejected-mercy-petitions-of-nithari-killer-surinder-koli-and-5-others-1405753592-1 [last accessed 06.02.2015]