Two sisters from Kolhapur whose mercy petitions against capital punishment were rejected by the President recently, on Tuesday moved the Bombay High Court praying their death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment.
The sisters — Renuka Shinde and Seema 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 petition, filed through their lawyer Sudeep Jaiswal, came up before Justices VM Kanade and PD Kode who posted it for hearing tomorrow.The judges also asked the petitioner's lawyer to show judgements which empower the high court to entertain a petition when the Supreme Court has confirmed death penalty and the President has rejected the mercy petition.Before posting the petition for hearing on Wednesday, the judges sought to know whether the execution of death sentence was to be carried out immediately.
Prosecutor SS Shinde sought time to seek instructions and after 30 minutes informed the court that the sentence would not be carried out immediately. The judges then decided to hear the matter on Wednesday.The two sisters were sentenced to death in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them between 1990 and October 1996.