Mumbai, In a major relief for two Kolhapur sisters whose mercy pleas were recently rejected by the President, the Bombay High Court today (Wednesday) stayed their execution till disposal of their petition seeking commutation of death sentence to life imprisonment.
Admitting the petition
of Renuka Shinde and Anjana Gavit, 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 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 duo till the time
their plea was decided.“Until such time, the
death sentence would be kept in abeyance,” the court ruled.
Shinde and Gavit have in
their petition contended that the President had taken more than five years to
decide their mercy petitions when such a plea should have been disposed of
within three months. On this ground alone, their death sentence may be commuted
to life term, the duo prayed.
The two sisters were
sentenced to death in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them
between 1990 and October 1996. They were assisted in the crime by their mother
Anjana Gavit and Renuka’s husband Kiran Shinde. Anjana died in custody, while
Kiran turned an approver.
They used to force the
children to beg, commit petty thefts and pickpocketing. The children were
starved to force them to commit crimes. After having sufficiently used the
children in crime, they brutally banged their head against the wall and killed
them.
The sisters, who could
be the first women convicts to be sent to the gallows since Independence are
lodged in Pune’s Yerwada prison and were recently informed about the President’s
decision rejecting their mercy petitions. The 14-day buffer period before
execution expired on August 16.The sisters argued
through their lawyer Sudeep Jaiswal that they have been living in constant fear
of death for more than 13 years since the time the Bombay High Court confirmed
their death sentence and the Supreme Court upheld it.“The extraordinary and
unjustified delay in execution of our death sentence has caused immense mental
torture,
emotional and physical agony to us,” they said in their petition.(Source- www.newsroompost.com)
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