Accused of triple murder, Neha Verma likely to be first woman hanged in India

After Yakub Memon's hanging, there are many other death row convicts awaiting the verdict on their hanging. One unique case comes from Indore, Madhya Pradesh where for the first time a 27-year-old woman, Neha Verma, might be hanged for killing three women of a family after looting them.

Verma is presently lodged in the Indore Jail after the Supreme Court had stayed the session's court decision of hanging the woman along with 3 other convicts. The convicts had been sentenced to death by a lower court which was upheld by the sessions and state high court.

What is the case?

• This was for the first time a woman was given a capital punishment sentence by the Indore sessions court. On 19 June, 2011 Verma had robbed the family of goods valued at around Rs. 1.5 lakh and had brutally murdered 3 women of the same family.

• According to the facts and figures presented in the court, Neha Verma was the mastermind of the crime. An insurance agent by profession, she had big dreams of living a lavish life with her boyfriend. For this, she chose the wrong path and landed up in jail.

• Neha Verma has been given a death sentence 3 times but the hearing is yet to take place in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the convicts wait for the decision in the Indore Jail.

Here is the other case in which two women were given capital punishment

• Renuka Shinde and Seema Mohan Gavit were sentenced to death in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children and killing 9 of them.

• Shinde and Gavit, who partnered with their mother Anjanabai Gavit, kidnapped the kids and pushed them into begging. They killed 9 of them after they stopped being 'productive'. While their mother died during trial, and the sisters' father Kiran Shinde was acquitted, the duo is currently lodged at the Yerwada Jail in Pune.

• President Pranab Mukherjee had rejected Renuka Kiran Shinde and her sister Seema Mohan Gavit's mercy petitions. However, they got a reprieve last year against an August 20, 2014 hanging after they moved the Bombay High Court citing delay in rejection of their mercy petition.

Serial murders and the victims

• In 1991: Shinde and Gavit's first victim was Santosh, a 1-year-old when he had been kidnapped in July 1990 from a beggar at the state transport bus stand in Kolhapur. His head was banged against an electricity pole.

• From 1991 to 1996: 11 more children kidnapped, police chargesheeted the mother and two daughters for killing 9 of them (conviction finally upheld is for 5 murders). The 10th victim was Kranti, daughter of Anjanabai Gavit's husband with another wife. Gavit and her daughters were chargesheeted for kidnapping her and killing her near Pune, but the sisters were not convicted of this murder.

Executions

• The number of people executed in India since Independence is a matter of dispute. Statistics claim that 171 people have been executed since independence. However, research by the People's Union for Civil Liberties indicates that the actual number of executions is in fact much higher, as they have located records of 1,422 executions in the decade from 1953 to 1963 alone. However, there is no record of any woman's execution.