21-yr-old woman sentenced to death for killing mother, sister (Gujrat)

Rajkot (Guj), Mar 15 (PTI)

A 21-year-old woman was today sentenced to death by a court in Gandhidham town of Kutch district for killing her mother and sister.

Additional Sessions Judge D R Bhatt awarded the death sentence to Manju Dungaria (21), after convicting her for the murder of her mother Rajiben (60) and sister Aarti (27) in February, 2017. “The court considered the incident as ‘rarest of rare’ and awarded death sentence to Manju under section 302 of the IPC. In addition, she was also sentenced to a five-year jail term under section 307 (attempt to murder), IPC,” public prosecutor Heteshiben Gadhavi said.

Manju’s brother Vijay Dungaria had alleged in his police complaint that the convict attacked Rajiben, Aarti and another sister, Madhu, with a sword when they were sleeping in their house in the Sunderpuri area of Gandhidham in the early hours of February 17, 2017. According to the complaint, the convict had attacked the victims in a fit of rage as Rajiben had slapped her, following a heated argument over domestic chores earlier that night.

Vijay, who was sleeping outside, woke up hearing his mother’s screams. He had rushed the three victims to the hospital, but Rajiben and Aarti were declared brought dead, while Madhu survived the attack. On the basis of Vijay’s complaint, Manju was arrested by the police on the same day. The court had relied on the testimonies of Vijay and Madhu, the public prosecutor said.

This is published unedited from the PTI feed.

Source: https://www.india.com/news/agencies/21-yr-old-woman-sentenced-to-death-for-killing-mother-sister-2946156/ (Accessed 24 December 2018)

Death sentence for seven in human sacrifice case (Maharashtra)

14 AUGUST 2017 Last Updated at 10:41 PM | SOURCE: PTI

During the trial, the girl's parents, who were prosecution witnesses, turned hostile but the court relied on DNA test which confirmed that the remains recovered by the police were of Swapna, and the statements of other prosecution witnesses.

Yavatmal (Mah), Aug 14 Seven persons were sentenced to death by a Yavatmal court today in a case of human sacrifice. Additional District and Sessions Judge A S Waghmare awarded capital punishment to Manoj Atram, Devidas Atram, Yadhavrao Tekam, Punaji Atram, Ramchandra Atram, Motiram Atram and Yeshodabai Meshram. They were residents of Choramba village in Ghatanji tehsil here and were accused of "sacrificing" a 7-year-old girl in 2012.

All of them were convicted under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code, apart from other offences. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on each of them, Assistant Prosecutor Shubhangi Darne said. Durga Shirbhate, another accused, was sentenced to five years' rigorous imprisonment for being part of the conspiracy. As per the police, in October 2012, Shirbhate, claiming to be possessed by a goddess, said that "human blood" was needed to appease the deity and save the clan as well as the village from its wrath.

The accused--some of them related to Shirbhate--then decided to 'sacrifice' Swapna Palaskar (7), a girl living in the same village. On October 24, the girl was persuaded to go to the house of Yeshodabai where Ramchandra chopped off her head after a ritual. The head and the body were buried with pooja material outside the house. One-and-half months later the girl's remains were exhumed and reburied in another person's field. Later the bones and skull were exhumed again, and thrown into bushes. In the meantime, the police had registered a missing person complaint regarding the girl, the prosecutor said.

During the trial, the girl's parents, who were prosecution witnesses, turned hostile but the court relied on DNA test which confirmed that the remains recovered by the police were of Swapna, and the statements of other prosecution witnesses.

Source: https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/death-sentence-for-seven-in-human-sacrifice-case/1123890 (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Serial killer sisters Renuke Shinde and Seema Gavit who abducted and murdered children in bid to avoid execution at the gallows (Maharashtra)

Renuka Shinde (left) and Seema Gavit with their mother Ananja Bai (centre) who mercilessly killed children they had kidnapped for their pickpocketing ring.Source:Supplied

THESE sisters used young children as part of their pickpocketing scam, before murdering them. Now they will face the death penalty. SERIAL killer sisters Seema Gavit and Renuke Shinde are making a last desperate bid to avoid execution for abducting and murdering multiple children aged under five years old. The sisters, who with their mother abducted or brutally murdered up to 13 children, are due to become the first women hanged in India for 72 years. On death row in Yerawada Central Jail in the western Indian city of Pune, the sisters are incarcerated for the crimes which they committed while aged in their 20s. The sisters’ lawyer Sudeep Jaiswal told news.com.au exclusively that the two women — known as the Gavit sisters — hoped to have their death penalty commuted to life in prison. Speaking from his chambers in Nagpur, Mr Jaiswal described plans to execute the sisters as “a barbaric act”. Yerawada jail has its own gallows and the “anda”, an egg-shaped cell where condemned prisoners are held and weighed before being hanged. Mr Jaiswal, who belongs to a prominent Indian legal and cricket-playing family, is reputed for his skills in getting murderers off or avoiding the death penalty. The Gavit sisters have exhausted all court appeals against their death sentence, and had the Indian president reject a plea for mercy.

Serial killer sisters Seema Gavit (left) and Renuka Shinde (right) are fighting against becoming the first women to be executed in India in 72 years.Source:Supplied

They have also launched a petition claiming that the delay in execution has caused them “immense mental torture, emotional and physical agony”. It was in 1996 that police arrested Seema Gavit, 25, Rebuka Shinde, 29, her husband Kiran Shinde and the girls’ mother Anjana Bai Gavit. Anjana, who died in prison the year after her arrest, was the matriarch of the family who operated a theft and pickpocket racket. They stole from people mainly in the streets of India’s ninth largest city Pune, in Maharashtra state, 40 per cent of whose population live in slums. But two events were to turn Anjana into something more sinister, a kidnapper and murderer with her daughters as assistants. A cold-eyed criminal, she had been arrested for 125 cases of petty theft including pick pocketing and snatching people’s gold chains from around their necks at railway stations, Anjana had become a thief after her first husband, a truck driver, deserted her after the birth of Renuka.

Officers escort Seema Mohan Gavit (red sari) and Renuka Shinde to an appeal hearing. Picture: Hindustan TimesSource: Supplied

Yerwada Central Prison, Pune Maharashtra

The sisters are on death row inside Yerawada Prison which has a special eg-shaped cell for condemned prisoners next to its gallows. Then her second husband, a retired soldier named Mohan Gavit, left her after the birth of Seema. He married another woman named Pratima and the couple had a baby girl. In 1990, Anjana, 58, ordered her daughters to abduct Mohan and Pratima’s daughter, Kranti, who she murdered. Around the same time, Renuka was with her toddler son Aashish in the process of pickpocketing someone in a temple complex when the victim caught her. An angry crowd surrounded Renuka, but using the boy as a foil, Renuka said “How can a woman with a child commit a crime?”.

The crowd let her go. It was after this that Anjana decided the trio would always take a child along when committing a theft. Anjana expanded the syndicate’s operations to other Indian cities or suburbs — Thane and Kalyan in Mumbai, Kolhapur, and Nashik — in Maharashtra. Renuka’s husband Kiran drove the getaway car. Over the next six years up to 40 children were kidnapped. Some were let go, others were deliberately injured to create a distraction, or murdered when they had lost their usefulness. At least nine were murdered and among the victims were a nine-month-old and two 18-month-olds.

Seema Gavit in a police mugshot following her arrest at the age of 25 for multiple murder.Source:Supplied

The youngest victim of the three Gavit killers was nine months old.Source:Supplied

  

One of the nine children kidnapped and murdered.Source:Supplied

Only five of the murders would be proven in court. The first of those was an 18-month-old boy named Santosh who Renuka kidnapped from a female beggar in Kolhapur. They trio took him to Kolhapur and went to a temple. When Seema tried to snatch a wallet and was caught by the male victim, he began beating her. To create a distraction, Anjana deliberately threw Santosh to the ground and the child sustained a head injury. People then consoled the trio, and the theft went unreported to police. The women then moved on to a bus stop and stole three more purses, but Santosh continued to cry from his bleeding head wound. Anjana decided the boy was of no further use and might attract the attention of police. She struck him with an iron pole until he was dead, and then washed her clothes of blood. They took his body to a rickshaw stand and disposed of it, fleeing back to their hostel.

Renuka Shinde’s four children have visited her and their aunt in Yerawada Jail.Source:Supplied

Renuka’s husband Kiran drove the getaway car.Source:Supplied

The girls’ mother Anjana was the mastermind.Source:Supplied

In 1991, they kidnapped nine-month-old Naresh, who was starved and beaten to death because he cried too much. Another victim, Bhavna, was the same age as Santosh. She was gagged, bundled into a handbag and taken to the ladies’ toilet of a cinema. There she was drowned with one of the sisters holding the girls’ legs to stop her flailing in the water. In 1993, they abducted a one-year-old child named Bunti and a girl, Swaty, 2, from Kalyan Railway station in Mumbai, and a boy Guddu, 2, from another Mumbai station. The three women murdered Bunti and Guddu and disposed of their bodies. In 1994, they kidnapped a child Anjali, 2, in Nashik and killed her and disposed of the body with Kiran Shinde’s help. In 1995, they kidnapped a boy Raja from a bus stop in Kolhapur and killed him. They kidnapped Pankaj Mamondkar, aged four, but he proved liable to talk to passers-by about his parents. In 1996, the women hung him upside down from the ceiling and slammed his head against a wall until he was dead.

Kolhapur bus stand where 18-month-old Santosh was thrown to the ground and later murdered by the girls’ mother Anjana. Picture: Ravi Ahlawat. Source:Supplied

Seema Gavit cracked under interrogation.Source:Supplied

Renuka Shinde killed at her mother’s behest.Source:Supplied

In November 1996, Anjana hatched a plot to kidnap and murder her ex-husband Mohan’s second daughter. But Mohan’s wife Pratima called police and Anjana, her two daughters and Renuka’s husband were arrested. One police investigator remembers all three women as being tough witnesses, but particularly the matriarch Anjana. “She would just sit there and look. Never once did that woman crack,” he said. But eventually Seema broke down, admitting to the kidnapping and killing of Kranti, which she said it was all under their mother’s orders. Detectives searched their home, uncovering the discarded clothing of children. They also found photographs of unknown toddlers at the birthday parties of Renuka’s children. Eventually the four were charged with kidnapping 13 children and killing nine. In December 1997, Anjana died in custody while awaiting trial.

Women inmates at Yerawada Central prison in Pune, India, which has its own gallows to hang prisoners on death row.Source:Supplied

Soldiers outside the High Court of Mumbai in 2011 as an appeal hearing decided the fate of serial killer sisters Seema Gavit and Renuka Shinde.Source:Supplied

Kiran Shinde turned “approver”, or state witness against his wife and sister-in-law and had all charges against him dropped. The trial began in 1998 and continued for three years while Kiran gave evidence of the torture inflicted on the children. The sisters were found guilty of six of the nine murders, but one of the killings was overturned on appeal in the High Court of Mumbai. In 2001, the Kolhapur Sessions Court sentenced Seema and Renuka to death. Renuka’s four children have visited their mother, now aged in her late 40s, and their aunt Seema, 45, in prison. The once attractive women are now gaunt and drawn, though both are hopeful of escaping the death sentence, lawyer Sudeep Jaiswal said. Seema is the more talkative of the two, and determined to win their petition for mercy. They are among 13 women on death row in India, whose ranks include Fahmida Sayed, one of the trio who planted the twin car bombs in Mumbai that killed 54 people in 2003. No woman has been hanged in India since 1955, when Rattan Bai Jain, who killed three girls, became the first woman sent to the gallows since independence. At Yerawada Jail, 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacker Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was hanged in 2012.

Renowned Indian lawyer Sudeep Jaiswal is defending the Gavit sisters who hope to avoid execution for murdering children. Picture: Facebook Source:Facebook

Source: https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/serial-killer-sisters-renuke-shinde-and-seema-gavit-who-abducted-and-murdered-children-in-bid-to-avoid-execution-at-the-gallows/news-story/ef93b4b1ccc699db80223bbf0b4018ad (Accessed 23 December 2018)

Madhya Pradesh: Tribal woman gets death sentence for killing husband

Written by Milind Ghatwai |Bhopal |Published: November 10, 2015 12:22:30 am

Using iron pincers, Rajwa Kol, a tribal woman, killed her 30-year-old husband Ramesh, neighbour Gudiya Yadav and her six-year-old son in Malkham village. 

A Madhya Pradesh court awarded death sentence to a 26-year-old woman for killing her husband and two others, including a six-year-old, in Sidhi on Saturday. Using iron pincers, Rajwa Kol, a tribal woman, killed her 30-year-old husband Ramesh, neighbour Gudiya Yadav and her six-year-old son in Malkham village under Bahari police station, about 30 km from the district headquarters, on March 5, 2012.

Additional public prosecutor Suryakant Pande said that all 16 witnesses, including five eyewitnesses, said she had committed the murders. “Her behaviour throughout the trial was normal and she denied killing anyone but broke down when the verdict was announced,’’ Pande said.

Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/madhya-pradesh-tribal-woman-gets-death-sentence-for-killing-husband/ (Accessed on 19 December 2018) 

Supreme Court slaps death sentence on woman

May 16, 2015 - J. Venkatesan | 

New Delhi

In a new twist to sentencing policy, the Supreme Court on Friday held that no leniency can be shown by courts in awarding death sentence only on the ground that the accused in a brutal killing is a woman. The sentencing policy must be proportionate to the crime committed and the sentence must be the same for man and woman, held a three-judge bench of Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justices S.A. Bobde and Arun Mishra, while confirming a death sentence awarded to a woman and her paramour for killing seven members of a family (the case was briefly reported on April 30 when the bench reserved orders).

Writing the judgement, the CJI said, “The Indian legal system today does not differentiate between a son and a daughter — they have equal rights and duties. Indian culture has been witness to for centuries, that daughters dutifully bear the burden of being the care-givers for her parents, even more than a son. Our experience has reflected that an adult daughter places greater emphasis on their relationships with their parents, and when those relationships go awry, it takes a worse toll on the adult daughters than the adult sons.” The bench said, “The principle that when the offence is gruesome and was committed in a calculated and diabolical manner, the age of the accused may not be a relevant factor. Death penalty is not proportional if the law’s most severe penalty is imposed on one whose culpability or blameworthiness is diminished, to a substantial degree, by reason of youth and immaturity. This, however, does not seem to be the case herein. The appellant-accused persons’ preparedness, active involvement. It said “Here is a case where the daughter, appellant-accused Shabnam, who has been brought up in an educated and independent environment by her family and was respectfully employed as a Shikshamitra (teacher) at the school, influenced by the love and lust of her paramour has committed this brutal parricide exterminating seven lives including that of an innocent child.”

It said “Of all the crimes that shock the souls of men, none has ever been held in greater abhorrence than parricide, which is by all odds the most complete and terrible inversion, not alone of human nature but of brute instinct. Such a deed would be sufficiently appalling were the perpetrator and the victims are uneducated and backward, but it gains a ghastly illumination from the descent, moral upbringing, and elegant respectful living of the educated family where the father and daughter are both teachers.

Dismissing the appeals against a Allahabad High Court verdict confirming a trial court’s order, the bench said “the crime is committed in the most cruel and inhuman manner which is extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical and revolting. Therefore, as the instant case requires us to award a punishment that is graduated and proportioned to the crime, we have reached the inescapable conclusion that the extreme culpability of both the appellants-accused makes them the most deserving for death penalty.”

Source: http://www.asianage.com/india/supreme-court-slaps-death-sentence-woman-430 [last accessed 28.05.2015]

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]

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]

More than 400 prisoners await the death sentence as justice is delayed

By Aman Sharma
PUBLISHED: 21:38 GMT, 9 March 2012 | UPDATED: 21:38 GMT, 9 March 2012

Ajmal Qasab and Mohammad Afzal are not the only ones on death row in India. There are 402 prisoners who await the noose. The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) says there are 402 convicts, including 10 women, in Indian jails who face the death penalty.

The report, Prison Statistics India 2010, says there has been no execution in India since 2004, when rapist Dhananjay Chatterji was hanged in West Bengal. The delay in deciding on such executions over the last six years and the slow wheels of justice mean that the count of persons on death row has increased from 273 in 2005 to 402 in 2010. Delhi's Tihar Jail alone has 18 prisoners on the death row.Out of the 402 people facing capital punishment, 25 have their mercy petitions pending before the President.


It is, however, not clear how many have their mercy petitions pending before the state governors or whose cases are yet to attain finality before the Supreme Court (SC). Last week, the SC, which is monitoring the pending mercy petition cases, had asked the state governments to furnish a report on all such pleas pending with the governors.

The NCRB report says that out of the 402 death row convicts, the maximum are from Uttar Pradesh, whose jails have 131 such condemned prisoners. It is followed by Karnataka (60), Maharashtra (49), Bihar (31), West Bengal (20), Delhi (18), Tamil Nadu (16), Kerala (14) and Jharkhand (12). The NCRB report says that in 2010, 97 prisoners were awarded the death sentence, while 62 convicts had their capital punishment commuted to life.


PRISONER FACTS
* Out of the 3.68 lakh inmates in jails, 15,037 are women
* Nearly 65 per cent of all inmates are undertrials
* There are 1,663 children staying in jails because their mothers are either convicts or undertrials
* 19,925 inmates are graduates or post-graduates; Nearly 6,000 such inmates are lodged in UP jails
* Chhattisgarh has the most crowded jails with a 237 per cent occupancy, while Delhi's is 173 per cent


Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2112877/More-400-prisoners-await-death-sentence-justice-delayed.html [accessed on 15th March 2012]