Two women set to be hanged for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them

New Delhi: Two Kolhapur women may become the first women ever to be hanged in India. The women from Kolhapur were sentenced to death in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them. Renuka Kiran Shinde and her sister Seema Mohan Gavit's mercy petitions’ were rejected last month by President Pranab Mukherjee late last month. The time taken by the state home department to inform all concerned after receiving the note from Rashtrapati Bhavan - ends on Saturday. Renuka and Seema, who partnered their mother Anjanabai Gavit to kidnap the kids and push them into begging and killed some of them after they stopped being productive, are currently lodged at the Yerwada jail in Pune. Anjanabai passed away during the trial, and the sisters' father Kiran Shinde turned approver and was acquitted. "We have informed the two convicts, their relatives, the legal remedial cells of the Supreme Court and also the district court about the rejection (of their mercy plea),'' Desk officer Deepak Jadiye of the home department was reported as saying , adding that no objections have been received yet on the Kolapur sisters' hanging. Judge G L Yedke, while awarding the death sentence to the sisters in 2001, in Kolhapur had described the nine kids' murders as 'the most heinous', and observed that the two sisters seemed to have enjoyed killing the children.