The Sinister Sisters:
Seema Mohan Gavit and her Sister Renuka Shinde: (1975 -)
In Pune, Kolhapur, and Nashik, Maharashtra, India. These
sisters were charged with kidnapping and
the murder of children ( through starvation and smashing their heads against
walls or electricity poles) and forcing other children them into begging and /
or petty thefts, their victim number is 9+, from June 1990 thru to October 1996, they were arrested on
November 19, 1996, and, Sentenced to death on June 29, 2001.
Sisters on death
row,
Convicted for killing 5 tots, they have hardly any chance of
escaping the noose.
Horror wears many faces. But perhaps the most chilling of
them all is the mask of ordinariness. When cruelty comes calling dressed in the
robes of banality, its power to inflict pain and cause fear is enhanced. There
is nothing striking about either Seema Mohan Gavit or her sister Renuka Shinde
to set them apart. Here are two sisters who could have been just another face
in the crowd, but their horrific past has shaped their present and left a
noose-shaped question mark looming over their future. As the Pune-based human
rights lawyer Aseem Saroday says, “Their ordinariness makes their actions even
more horrifying.” On August 31, 2006, the Supreme Court confirmed the death
sentence on Seema and her sister Renuka for killing five children, mostly
toddlers in Pune, Kolhapur, and Nashik during 1990 and 1996. Ujjwal Nikam,
special public prosecutor, who sought death penalty for them recalls a chilling
fact. “We limited the period of killing to six years. However, this had been
going on for longer than that. The women could not remember how many children
they had killed.”
Seema, Renuka, their mother Anjanbai, and Renuka's husband
Kiran Shinde were petty thieves, who kidnapped children to be used as a cover
for their activities. It started in 1990 when Renuka was caught pickpocketing
at the Chatursinghi temple in Pune. Her son, Ashish, from her first marriage
was with her. Renuka used him as her defense, convincing the crowd that a woman
with a child couldn't possibly be a thief. On realizing that a child could save
them from tricky situations, the gang began kidnapping children to be used as a
front. And the children would be killed if they became a problem. The mother and daughters were already charged
with petty crimes when they started their killing spree. Seema's father was a
truck driver. Anjanabai's second husband, Mohan, who was Renuka's father,
abandoned them and moved in with another woman. He had two daughters from his
second marriage; Anjanabai and her daughters started their killing spree with
Mohan's elder daughter. Temple compounds, railway stations, fairs, bus
stations… any crowded place was a hunting ground for them. And Kiran Shinde
drove the getaway car, a Fiat. Most of the kidnapped children belonged to poor
families. “Maybe, the parents tried to file a complaint and were turned away.
Maybe, they were unable to do so. The kidnapping reports did not start coming
in till very late,” recalls Nikam. The first kidnapping victim was a beggar
woman's one-year-old son, Santosh. They used him as a distraction. If one of
them was caught pickpocketing, the other woman carrying the child would fling
him to the floor. Hurt, the child would start crying and it would create a commotion
and distract the crowd. Later the child would be ruthlessly killed if it became
a nuisance or a burden. “Santosh was hurt when he was hurled to the floor.
Denied medication, the baby's wounds festered and he was crying uncontrollably.
Anjanabai shut him up by bashing his head repeatedly against an iron rod,” says
an investigating officer. The sisters watched their mother's gruesome act while
munching on Vada pav.
Seema once dropped a seven-month-old baby, Swapnil, because
she could not deal with its incessant crying. In one instance, they hung a
two-year-old boy upside down and slammed his head against a wall. “They chopped
the body of one child and stuffed it into a gunny bag for disposal. The gang
carried the bag with them and watched a movie at Alka Talkies in Kolhapur and
ate bhel puri while the bag lay between their feet,” says Saroday, who was
associated with the case in the Supreme Court. The sisters were caught when
they visited Mohan to kidnap his second daughter in October 1996. His second
wife had filed a complaint against them and their mother when her elder
daughter went missing. While questioning the trio on the missing girl, the
police unearthed evidence that hinted at several murders. The case was handed
over to the CID.
The investigating team zoomed in on Kiran Shinde, the
weakest link who turned approver and gave all details to the police. “The women
denied all the charges. They insisted they were falsely implicated,” says
Nikam. He remembers them as unusually sharp with an uncanny ability to identify
plainclothes officers during the hearing. Anjanabai died during trial. Nine
murders were charged against the gang, and the sessions court found them guilty
of six murders. The High Court said that prosecution could prove only five cases
against them. The sisters are now lodged in Yerwada Jail, Pune, and even today,
jail officials reveal, they insist they are innocent. “Every time the jail
superintendent visits they want to know about the status of their mercy
petition. In their mind there is no doubt about their sentence being commuted,”
said a jail official. After the Supreme Court verdict the sisters were
separated and Renuka was sent to Nagpur jail. Advocate Swati Saroday, who
worked with Renuka for rehabilitating her four children, recalls an irate woman
quick to getting tetchy if she felt her work was not being done. “She wanted to
be with her sister and would often go on hunger strikes. She was very disturbed
at the separation. She also wanted her children to have access to her bank accounts
but they were sealed. She would fret over what would happen to them,” recalls
Swati. She admits to being flummoxed by Renuka's love for her children when she
had, in cold blood, killed so many others.
Last year, Renuka was transferred back to Yerwada. The
sisters are lodged in separate cells and giving them company is Fehmida Sayyed,
also sentenced to death by the Bombay High Court for the twin bomb blasts in
Mumbai in 2003. Renuka's children were regular visitors but now the visits are
erratic. “They were in remand home. The oldest child turned 18 and was
released. He insisted on taking all his siblings with him,” says a source. The
Supreme Court in its judgment said that the killings demonstrated a 'depraved
mind' that killed without any compulsion. Prison, it is said, causes even the
most hardened nut to crack, pondering over what landed them there. The two
sisters are, however, more concerned about why Fehmida gets hot water when ill,
than the memory of those whose lives they cut short even before they began.
***
A case diary of the crimes:
The accused: Seema Mohan Gavit and her sister Renuka Shinde,
and the crime: the Murder of five
children—Santosh, Anjali, Shradha, Gauri and Pankaj. (Police believe they had
kidnapped thirteen and murdered nine).
Arrested along with their mother, Anjanabai and Renuka's
husband, Kiran Shinde, in 1996,
Trial court sentences them to death on June 29, 2001
High Court upholds the verdict on September 9, 2004
Supreme Court confirms death sentence on August 31, 2006
And currently lodged in Yerawada Jail, Pune. Awaiting execution by hanging.
For Killers, Murder Was In The Family
The first woman to be hanged in India is likely to be either
Renuka Shinde or sister Seema Gavit
When the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence awarded to
two Nashik women for killing nine children, it stated that “these convicts are
unlikely to be reformed”. Though this is the first time that a woman will be
hanged to death in the country, the story of the sisters, Renuka Shinde and
Seema Gavit, reads like a crime novel come true. Their mother Anjana Gavit, the
mastermind behind the killings who died during the trial, had introduced them
to crime. Shinde’s husband Kiran Shinde, also involved in the killings, turned
an approver and got a reprieve. Police say Anjana Gavit took to theft early. RM
Bomche, who was initially Kiran Shinde’s counsel, says: “Though she got
married, her stealing habits continued. Soon she developed illicit ties with a
truck driver and eloped with him to Pune.”
Anjana’s elder daughter Seema was born in Pune. Soon after,
the truck driver deserted her. Then she married retired soldier Mohan Gavit.
“The second daughter, Renuka, was born to the couple. Regular police harassment
became intolerable for him and he moved out with another woman named Pratibha and
settled in Nashik. They had two daughters. The elder one, Kranti, was killed by
the sister duo,” says Bomche, who convinced Kiran Shinde to turn an approver. With
very meagre resources, Anjana and her daughters moved to Nashik for some time,
hoping to reconcile with Mohan. When she found that she could not reconcile
with Mohan, the three resorted to petty theft. To avoid police detection, they
returned to Pune in 1990. They made Pune their second base after Nashik and
began operating from here. “The mother would instruct the sisters to move in a
pair inside crowded places especially during festivals. They would then kidnap
a child and use it as a shield. While one would remain with the child, the
other would escape from the scene. If anyone cast a doubt, she would claim to
be innocent since she was carrying a child. She would thus escape,” says
Nashik-based journalist Sudhakar Shinde of Marathi daily Deshdoot. “They would
kidnap children from Nashik, Mumbai, Kolhapur and Pune. The child would be kept
in their Pune residence. They would be eliminated if they didn’t get the
ransom. They kidnapped 13 children aged between one and nine. By their own
admission, they killed nine kids,” adds Shinde.
But the end was nigh for the three. They came to Nashik to
kill Kranti, Anjana’s stepdaughter. When Kranti went missing, her mother
registered a complaint on October 22, 1996 against the three, accusing them of
kidnapping her. The investigating officer in the case, Inspector Mandaleshwar
Madhavrao Kale, says they could not trace the girl at first. But when the three
returned to kidnap Pratibha’s younger daughter, they were caught, he says. “The
sisters confessed to killing Kranti in Pune under their mother’s instructions.
We arrested the mother and seized all the belongings to find more clues. There
were many cases of missing children, which were registered during the same time
between 1990 and 1996, when their operations were at their peak,” says Kale.
The state Criminal Investigations Department soon took over the investigations.
Cases of kidnapping and murder were filed against them in late 1996 and they
were sentenced to death. Their appeals in the Bombay High Court and the Supreme
Court did not quash the conviction. The prime witness against the sisters,
Vidya Kulkarni, the criminals’ neighbor in Nashik when they had kidnapped
Kranti in 1996, says: “My apartment window opened on theirs. I could see them
beating up Kranti every day. I had many things to tell.” The maths teacher
shudders thinking of the past. “My daughter used to play with Renuka’s
children. She even accompanied Anjana to the market several times. God was kind
enough to ensure that my daughter remained unharmed. We never knew about their
credentials until the news appeared in the papers. Today we don’t know whom to
trust,” she says.
The Supreme Court
upholds death penalty to 2 sisters in Anjanabai Gavit case
''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. 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,'' they said.
The bench said that the sisters had ''not been committing
crimes under compulsion but took it very casually and killed all these
children, least bothering about their life or the agony of their parents.''
''We do not think that these appellants are likely to reform, and will remain a
menace to society. The inhabitants of the locality in which the two were living
was so horrified that they could not send their children to school for the fear
that they would be kidnapped or killed,'' it further noted. The bench also
vacated the stay it had granted against the execution of both, when their
appeal had been admitted and directed the authorities concerned to make all
arrangements for the execution of the penalty. Renuka alias Rinku, her husband
Kiran Shinde and her sister along with their mother, Anjanabai Gavit, were part
of a gang that kidnapped children from Thane, Nashik and other areas between
1990 and 1996 and forced them to become beggars or commit petty thefts. Later,
when the children began to pose a problem, they were mercilessly killed by the
gang members.
The gang had kidnapped over a dozen children in this period,
all of whom later disappeared. The murders of the children, aged between seven
months and four years, had gone undetected for nearly six years. While there
were no eyewitnesses in the case, the prosecution had relied on the testimony
of Renuka's husband, who had turned approver. Facing charges for the murder of
nine children, the two sisters and their mother Anjanabai were ultimately
convicted of the murder of five -- identified as Santosh, Anjali, Shradha,
Gauri and Pankaj. However, Anjanabai had died in custody in 1997, a little over
an year after her arrest.
***
And More …
Death for
child-smash sisters:
(From TelegraphIndia.com, August 31, 2006)
Two sisters who kidnapped children and killed them by
smashing their heads against walls or electricity poles could become the first
women to be hanged in Independent India. The Supreme Court today upheld the
death sentences awarded to Renuka Kiran Shinde, 39, and Seema Mohan Gavit, 35,
refusing leniency to the “depraved” women and saying they were unlikely to
reform themselves if given a second chance at life. The Pune-based sisters were
accused of kidnapping 13 children under five between 1990 and 1996 and killing
nine of them, but only five of the murders could be proved. They would carry
the children in their arms to avoid suspicion while moving about in crowded
places, snatching purses. The children were murdered when they grew too old to
be carried about, or if they tended to cry in public and arouse suspicion.
When one such child’s cries led to a scuffle outside a
temple in Kolhapur, the sisters threw him down to momentarily divert the
public’s attention. As they seized their chance to escape, the women somehow
managed to pick the severely injured child up and take him along. Their mother
Anjanabai later killed him by smashing his head against a pole, police said. Another
victim, a three-year-old who talked to passers-by about his parents, was hung
upside down from the ceiling and his head was repeatedly slammed against a
wall. Among the other victims were two 18-month-olds and a two-year-old. The
apex court took note of how the women killed the children “the moment they were
no longer useful’’, acting not “under any compulsion but very casually… least
bothering about their lives or agony of their parents. ” If the court — which
has described the case as “rarest of the rare” — rejects the sisters’ review
plea, their only hope would be their mercy petition that has been lying with
the President for five years.
Although many women are awarded the death sentence in India,
legal experts couldn’t recall any being executed after Independence. Some have
had their sentences commuted — as happened with Rajiv Gandhi murder accused
Nalini — and the mercy petitions of many more are pending.
Lawyers said this was probably the first case in India where
two women had been sentenced to death. Seema and Renuka were allegedly helped
by Anjanabai and Renuka’s husband Kiran Shinde in kidnapping the children from
railway stations, bus stands and temples in Kolhapur, Thane, Mumbai and Nashik.
Anjanabai died a year after the gang’s arrest in 1996 while Kiran had all
charges dropped against him after he turned approver and testified against his
wife and sister-in-law. After a three-year trial, a sessions court awarded the
death sentences to the sisters in 2001 and Bombay High Court upheld them in
2004.
“The nature of the crime and the systematic way in which
each child was kidnapped and killed amply demonstrates the depravity of the
mind of the appellants (the convicts),’’ the Supreme Court bench headed by
Justice K.G. Balakrishnan said today. “We have carefully considered the whole
aspect of the case and are also alive to the new trends in sentencing system in
criminology. We do not think that these appellants are likely to be
reformed."
***
And still more …
Killer sisters nurtured by mother
(From the TelegraphIndia.com, August 31, 2006)
It started as personal vendetta and soon turned into a
profession. Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit abducted their first victim in 1990,
police said. It was the elder daughter of their father’s second wife. The
sisters, whose death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court today, went on a
kidnapping spree after that. All their victims were little children, some of
whom were killed, and the hand that rocked the crime cradle was their
58-year-old mother’s. Anjanabai Gavit, a resident of Kothrud in Pune, was never
an average housewife. There are 125 cases lodged against her for petty thefts
like picking pockets and snatching gold chains at crowded railway stations. But
the small-time criminal turned cold-blooded kidnapper when her husband Mohan
left her to marry another woman named Pratima in 1990. Along with daughters
Renuka and Seema and Renuka’s husband Kiran Shinde, Anjanabai, then aged 58,
plotted to abduct Mohan and Pratima’s first daughter. The second daughter was
to be kidnapped in 1996, but police caught up with her and her family.
The six years in between saw Anjanabai mastermind the
kidnappings of a dozen children in Nashik, Pune and Kolhapur. Investigations
revealed that the family would take the abducted children along to distract
attention while they carried out petty crimes — and to win the police’s
sympathy if caught. But when the kids outgrew their utility or stood in the
family’s way, they were done away with. Kiran, who turned approver in the case,
gave the police an account of the torture inflicted on the children. Santosh,
barely 18 months old, began crying one evening at a bus stand. Fearing he would
draw people’s attention, the women banged his head against the floor and then
an iron pole till he died. His body was thrown under an auto rickshaw. Another
18-month-old, Bhavna, was gagged, bundled into a handbag and dumped in the
ladies’ toilet of a cinema. Two-year-old Naresh was starved and beaten to death
because he would wail for his mother. Three-year-old Pankaj made an even bigger
mistake. He would talk to passers-by about his parents. So he was hung upside
down from the ceiling and his head slammed against a wall. The drive for
personal revenge came back to haunt the family in 1996, when the sisters set
out to claim their 14th victim — their second step-sister. But this time, they
landed in the police net.
The Gavits and the Shindes were lodged in Yerwada prison,
where Anjanabai died a year later. The trial began in September 1998, and three
years later, Kolhapur additional district and sessions judge G.L. Yedke awarded
the death penalty to Renuka and Seema in a crowded courtroom. Charges were
dropped against Renuka’s husband Kiran, who had testified against the women. The
couple have four children of their own. They were handed over to Kiran’s
Pune-based mother.
High Court upholds death rap for killer sisters:
(IndiaTimes.com, September 9, 2004)
MUMBAI: Justices R M S Khandeparkar and R S Mohite of the
Bombay high court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence awarded to sisters
Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit, who had kidnapped 13 children and murdered five
of them between June 1990 and October 1996. The sisters had been sentenced to
death by the Kolhapur sessions court. They were convicted for the murder of
five of them. The sisters, along with their late mother Anjana Gavit and
Renuka's husband Kiran Shinde, would kidnap the children and force them into
begging and petty thefts.
But, when the children became a liability, the women
simply killed them. And sought others to take their place.
---
As always, stay safe !
Bird
***
