Mathura ready to hang the first woman in the country

  • | Thursday | 18th February, 2021

The Mathura district jail has started preparations to hang a woman for the first time in independent India. Shabnam Ali, 38, was convicted of killing seven members of her family — her mother, father, two brothers, sister-in-law, cousin and 10-month-old nephew — by serving them milk laced with sedatives and then slitting their throats.

The Mathura district jail has started preparations to hang a woman for the first time in independent India. Shabnam Ali, 38, was convicted of killing seven members of her family — her mother, father, two brothers, sister-in-law, cousin and 10-month-old nephew — by serving them milk laced with sedatives and then slitting their throats.

Shabnam, 25 then with a double MA, wanted to marry Saleem, a class VI dropout, but her family did not want her to. Both were sentenced to death in 2010 by the session’s court in Amroha in UP, where they are from. Over the next 11 years, Shabnam went to the Allahabad high court, the Supreme Court, the President and then the Supreme Court (SC) again. In January last year, her review petition was dismissed by the SC. However, she has not exhausted all judicial remedies.

Though her lawyer informed that they have not been informed about a death warrant being issued in the one year since, at the Mathura district jail, the only one in the country where women can be hanged, preparations are afoot.

“We have not received any death warrant but have started preparing … Last year in February, the executioner, Pawan Jallad, had inspected the hanging house.
"He said that there was a problem with the structure of the gallows. We are fixing that now. We have also just ordered two hanging ropes from Bihar’s Buxar central jail,” Mathura senior jail superintendent Shailendra Maitrey said on Wednesday.

Built 150 years ago, the gallows has never been used in independent India. Step-sisters Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit have been on death row for kidnapping 13 children and killing at least five of them. A woman from Lucknow, Ramshri, had been sentenced to death in 1998 but it was commuted to life imprisonment after she gave birth to a child in prison. So, the hanging house, with creaking structures and covered in overgrowth with decades of disuse, would take a while to set in order should a death warrant be issued.

An official involved in the preparations said that the Amroha sessions court, which had first sentenced Shabnam to death, has been moved for the execution of the sentence. Shabnam is incarcerated at Rampur jail. “Mathura jail officials have been asked to start preparing. That`s what they are doing,” the official added.

So is Pawan Jallad, the fourth-generation executioner who had hanged the Nirbhaya rapists last year. “It is god’s will. I am just an instrument,” he said in Meerut. His great grandfather Laxman Ram had hanged Bhagat Singh, his father Kallu had hanged Indira Gandhi’s assassins and Ranga and Billa, and his father Mammu was the state hangman for 47 years. When he goes to Mathura jail for Shabnam’s hanging, he will take his 20-year-old son along. “But I do hope I get a decent mehnataana (compensation) for my work. I get just Rs 7,500 a month. I have seven children,” the 58-year-old said.

But legal experts said all of this is not definitive yet. “Shabnam could still seek another judicial review of the petition in SC. She could also file a curative petition,” informed SC lawyer Sarthak Chaturvedi. “No one can be hanged until all legal remedies are exhausted."


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