Bombay HC commutes death for 2 killer sisters in Maharashtra to life, blames lax babus

MUMBAI: Holding that an unexplained and gross delay of almost 8 years in disposal of their mercy petitions is “wholly due to the casual approach” of Maharashtra government officers, the Bombay high court on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of sisters Renuka Shinde (50, left) and Seema Gavit (48) to life term for kidnapping 13 children and brutally killing five of them.
The Kolhapur women had killed an 18-month-old kid by smashing his head.

The HC bench of Justices Nitin Jamdar and Sarang Kotwal, however, declined the sisters’ plea for orders to release them as they had completed 25 years in prison. The murders were committed between 1990 and 1996 and the two have been in custody since October 1996.
In 2001, a trial court had convicted them; in 2004, the high court confirmed the death sentence awarded; and in 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the noose, observing the two had shown no remorse for the brutality. On July 7, 2014, the President of India had rejected their mercy petition.
Prolonged delay in executing death rap has a dehumanising effect: HC
The Bombay high court on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of sisters Renuka Shinde (50) and Seema Gavit (48) to life term for kidnapping 13 children and brutally killing five of them.
On Tuesday, the Bombay HC said, “Life imprisonment is till (end of) life of the convict, unless the competent authority remits the remainder.” It added that the brutality in murdering innocent children “is beyond words to condemn” and this gravity and “depravity” will be factored in by the state if the sisters seek remission.
“Though the procedure for deciding the mercy petitions mandates speed and expediency, the state machinery showed indifference and laxity at each stage of processing the files. That it took seven years only for the movement of files for such a grave issue is unacceptable when electronic communications were available to be used,” the HC said.
In 2014, the sisters had filed a petition before the HC to commute their death rap to life imprisonment. Their counsel, Aniket Vagal, contended that the state’s unreasonable and unjustified delay in dealing with their mercy petitions violated their fundamental right to life and sought their release from their “solitary confinement”.
They were on the death row in prison, in the “phansi (noose) yard”, said public prosecutor Aruna Pai, not solitary confinement. The HC said the yard’s name itself has “an ominous connotation” of a “brooding horror of hanging haunting the prisoner in the condemned cell”, as described once by Justice V R Krishna Iyer. The HC referred to the Supreme Court’s judgment in the case of Shatrughan Chauhan—the top court had held that this additional incarceration stemming from unexplained delay under such a situation is unconstitutional.
Article 21, for right to life, of the Constitution of India extends to the stage of execution of the sentence, the SC had said. “Prolonged delay in execution of a sentence of death has a dehumanising effect and that circumstances beyond the petitioners’ control caused the delay in this case, and the resultant situation mandates commutation of their death sentences,” the HC said in its 59-page judgment. It expressed surprise at the state’s “vehement” submission that the sisters be executed even today despite the delay.
The HC said the state’s argument “overlooks that it is the dereliction of its officers that is the cause for commuting the death sentence to that of life imprisonment”, adding that the “state represents the interest of society in the criminal justice system” and it “not only violated the constitutional rights of the petitioners but also failed the innocent victims of these heinous crimes”.