Notorious killer sisters, who kidnapped and murdered babies, to become first women ex

Twila

Nanah Potato
Mar 26, 2003
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I can't even begin to imagine what kind of darkness must lie inside these women.

Notorious killer sisters, who kidnapped and murdered babies, to become first women executed in India

Renuka Shinde was a poor teenage mother when she tried to steal a purse during a crowded festival at a temple in India.

Caught in the act, Shinde feigned outrage and showed her accusers her young son. Would a thief take their child along, she asked. The crowd at the temple in Pune, 150 kilometres south-east of Mumbai, let her go.

The experience spawned an idea in Shinde that would lead her and her sister to become India’s most notorious serial killers.

They kidnapped up to 13 children, using some of them to cover their crimes and teaching others to pick pockets. But when they became too troublesome, the children were murdered.

Now Shinde and her sister, Seema Gavit, are to become the first women to be executed in India after the country’s president rejected their final appeal for mercy.

This is indeed one of the rarest of the rare cases where the perpetrators deserve the death sentence

“While I’m professionally and personally against the capital punishment, this is indeed one of the rarest of the rare cases where the perpetrators deserve the death sentence,” human rights lawyer and activist Asim Sarode told The Hindu newspaper.

Mr. Sarode, who at one time helped the Indian Supreme Court with the case, told the paper there was an “eerie calmness” as Shinde answered his questions about the murders, all the time stroking a stray cat.

“The sisters’ modus operandi was using small children, often toddlers, as diversions to distract the public while one of them was engaged in stealing purses. When in danger of being caught, the other used to throw or bang the child to the ground or any hard surface. The object was to elicit sympathy by manipulating the public’s emotions,” he said.

The sisters themselves were barely adults when they began their killing spree — Gavit was just 15 when she killed her first victim and her older sister was 17.

They had been inducted into a life of crime by their mother, Anjana, who taught them how to pick pockets in crowded marketplaces and during religious festivals in small towns throughout Maharashtra, western India.

The first kidnapping victim was a one-year-old boy stolen from a beggar woman. If the sisters were caught stealing, one of them would throw the child to the ground. Eventually, the child was hurt so badly he would not stop crying. Prosecutors said Anjana killed the boy by bashing his head against an iron rod. She died in prison at age 50 before she could be tried.

“In one of their particularly gruesome murders, they hung a two-year-old upside down, bashed his head against the wall and chopped him to pieces. They then went for a movie at a local theatre in Kolhapur, eating bhel puri . All the while, the bag, with the chopped remains remained under their feet,” said Mr. Sarode.

For five years, starting in 1991, the sisters were alleged to have kidnapped 13 children.

Their last victim was killed as an act of revenge plotted by their mother against her estranged husband, Seema’s father, who had abandoned her, remarried and had children with his new wife.

Shinde and Seema helped kidnap his nine-year-old daughter. Kranti, who was then killed by their mother and dumped in a field.

They were arrested when Kranti’s mother voiced her suspicions about her husband’s ex-wife to the police.

Sentencing the sisters, Judge G. L. Yedke described the murders as “the most heinous” and said they seemed to have enjoyed killing the children.

An appeal court said the women committed the crimes almost casually.

“Going into the details of the case, we find no mitigating circumstances against them apart from the fact they are women. Further the nature of their crime and the systematic way in which each child was kidnapped and killed amply demonstrates the depravity of the mind of the appellants,” said the court.

“They indulged in criminal activities for a very long period and continued till they were caught by the police. They very cleverly executed plans of kidnapping the children, and the moment they were no longer useful, killed them and threw the dead body at some deserted place.”

The court said the sisters were unlikely to reform and would remain a menace to society.

Shinde and Gavit were convicted of a series of child murders in 2001 and sentenced to death. They were charged with 13 kidnappings and 10 murders and were found guilty of five killings. They denied the charges.

Their lawyer said they were wrongly convicted on the evidence of Shinde’s husband, who had initially confessed to his own involvement, but later changed his story and gave evidence against them in return for immunity.



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