بالصور..الحكم بإعدام «ريا وسكينة» في الهند - Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit execution in India for murdering five children

أفادت صحيفة «ذا هندو» المحلية على موقعها الإلكتروني، اليوم الخميس، أن حكم الإعدام الصادر بحق اختين غير شقيقتين في الهند بسبب خطفهما وقتلهما للأطفال، تم إيقافه حيث وافقت المحكمة على النظر في التماسهما بتخفيف الحكم.

وأضافت الصحيفة أن الأختين قالتا إن تأجيل تنفيذ الحكم الصادر ضدهما لمدة 13 عاما، كان زائدا عن الحد، مطالبتين بأن يتم تخفيف الحكم للسجن مدى الحياة.

وكانت الأختان رينوكا شيندي وسيما جافيت وهما من مدينة كولهابور التابعة لولاية ماهاراشترا الواقعة غرب الهند، أدينتا عام 1996 بتهمة خطف 13 طفلا وقتل تسعة.

وقال الادعاء إنهما تديران شبكة تسول، وأيدت كل من محكمة بومباي العليا والمحكمة العليا في البلاد الحكم.

TWO sisters are set to become the first women executed in India since the country gained independence, after the President rejected their bid for an appeal.

Renuka Shinde and her sister Seema Gavit were convicted in 2001 of kidnapping 13 children, forcing them to join a gang of thieves and murdering at least five of them.

     

They were reportedly recruited into a life of petty crime as teenagers by their late mother, and used the children to distract their victims while the sisters robbed them.

President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected the appeal bid of the sisters

The pair are the worst serial killers the country has seen with Seema Gavit just 15 when she killed her first victim. Her older sister was 17.

Shinde, 45, and Gavit, 39, were found guilty of kidnapping the 13 children in the western state of 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 and last month President Pranab Mukherjee, who has the power to commute a death sentence, rejected their appeal.

Legally the sisters have now exhausted all avenues to appeal against their sentence.

But on Monday their lawyer told he would lodge a petition with the High Court in Mumbai, where they were originally convicted, on the grounds that the 13-year delay in carrying out the sentence was excessive.

“There has been an inordinate delay in carrying out the death sentence. So I will pray to the courts to commute the same into life behind bars,” said Sudeep Jaiswal, who has represented the two sisters since 2010.

“I will file the writ petition today.”

In a landmark ruling this year, the Supreme Court said “inordinate and inexplicable” delays in carrying out executions were grounds for commuting death sentences.

Indian courts use the principle of “rarest of rare case” to classify the crime before pronouncing the death sentence.

Earlier this year a Mumbai court ordered three men to hang for their involvement in two gang-rape cases, the first death sentences to be handed down for multiple sex attacks since the law was toughened last year.

Their sentences confirmed by the Supreme Court.

The last person to be executed in India was a Kashmiri man last year over a deadly 2001 attack on the national parliament in New Delhi.