Mumbai: The two Kolhapur-based sisters Renuka Shinde, 45, and Seema Gavit, 39, sentenced to death, may not have to face the gallows immediately as the Bombay High Court has adjourned the hearing of their plea for commuting the death penalty to life imprisonment to September 9.
The court on Tuesday refused to grant a stay on the execution of the two sisters, sentenced to death for kidnapping 13 children and killing at least five of them between 1990 and 1996. The court had adjourned the hearing for Wednesday after the Maharashtra government informed it that the duo, who would be the first women to be hanged in the country, would not be executed on Wednesday. The duo had moved the court after their mercy petition was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.
Admitting their petition, a division bench of the court also directed the Centre and Maharashtra government to explain within three weeks the reasons for the delay in deciding their petition.
The two women had sought commutation of their death sentence to life imprisonment citing a delay of six years in deciding their mercy petition. The petition filed by their lawyers Sudeep Jaiswal and Vijay Hiremath, on Tuesday, said, “The extraordinary and unjustified delay in the execution of their death sentence has caused immense mental torture, emotional and physical agony to the petitioners. They had urged the court to reduce the punishment citing a January ruling of the Supreme Court in which the death sentence of 15 convicts was reduced to life imprisonment on various grounds, including the inordinate delay in deciding their mercy petitions.
Observing that the high court had powers under Article 226 of the Constitution to entertain the plea of the sisters, who kidnapped children, made them beg and commit petty crimes before killing them, Justices V M Kanade and P D Kode ruled the petition was maintainable.
The court posted the next hearing on September 9 after the state government assured it will not go ahead with the execution of the death sentence awarded to the women till the time their plea was decided. “Until such time, the death sentence would be kept in abeyance,” the court ruled.
