shabnam case

The Shabnam case (Amroha Murder Case)

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Brief-

Amroha murder case refers to a April 2008 familicide in Uttar Pradesh by Shabnam and her lover Saleem , who murdered seven members of Shabnam’s family by sedating six of them and then hacking them to death; the seventh victim, a ten month old baby was murdered unsedated. ◦Media reports in February 2021 stated that Shabnam is likely be the first woman to be hanged in independent India. The Governor of Uttar Pradesh as well as the President of India rejected Shabnam’s mercy petition. Now her 12 year old son Muhmmed Taj has requested the President of India to cancel her punishment.

Facts-

◦On February 18, the 12-year-old son of Shabnam, a death row convict from Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha, appealed to President Ram Nath Kovind to “forgive” his mother. The same day, Shabman filed a second mercy petition with the Governor of Uttar Pradesh and the President of India, both of whom have earlier rejected her plea. ◦If executed, Shabnam will be the first woman in independent India to be hanged for a crime. ◦Only one jail in India –– the one in Mathura –– has the provisions for hanging a woman convict. Pawan Kumar, the hangman in the December 2012 New Delhi gangrape case, has recently been quoted as saying by media outlets that he had been to the Mathura jail to see if the execution room was in working order.

What Shabnam was convicted of

◦Shabnam along with her lover Saleem was convicted of killing seven members of her family in 2008 –– father Shaukat Ali (55), mother Hashmi (50), elder brother Anees (35), Anees’s wife Anjum (25), younger brother Rashid (22), cousin Rabia (14), and Arsh, Anees’s 10-month-old son. ◦Shabnam, belonging to the Saifi Muslim community, lived in Bawankhedi, a village in Hasanpur tehsil of Amroha in western Uttar Pradesh.

A post-graduate in two subjects, English and Geography, she worked as a shiksha mitra (government school teacher). Her family was opposed to her relationship with Saleem, a Class VI dropout, who worked at a wood sawing unit outside their home and belonged to the Pathan community.

◦According to the prosecution case, on the intervening night of April14-15, Shabnam sedated six of her family members –– everyone except the baby Arsh. Saleem then chopped their heads off with an axe, while Shabnam held them by their hair. She throttled her 10-month-old nephew. With the rest of her family dead, Shabnam would have been the sole heir to their house and other property.

◦When Shabnam and Saleem were arrested five days after the crime, they were both in their 20s, and Shabnam was seven weeks pregnant. In December of that year, she gave birth to her son. ◦In 2010, an Amroha sessions court sentenced them to death, which was upheld by the Allahabad High Court in 2013 and the Supreme Court in May 2015. Within 10 days, however, the Apex Court stayed the death warrants.

◦In September 2015, then-Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik rejected Shabnam’s plea for mercy, which she had sought on the ground of her responsibilities towards her son, Mohammad Taj. In August 2016, then President Pranab Mukherjee rejected her mercy petition.

◦In January 2020, a Supreme Court bench headed by CJI SA Bobde upheld the death sentence.

What Shabnam claimed

◦Shabnam was the one who had raised the alarm about her family’s murder. She had initially claimed that unknown assailants had entered her home and killed everyone. ◦However, during the trial, the couple turned against each other. The 2015 Supreme Court judgment says that in her Section 313 statement, Shabnam said Saleem had entered the house with a knife through the roof and killed all her family members while she was asleep. Saleem, on the other hand, said he reached the house “only on the request of Shabnam” and that when he reached there, she confessed to having killed the others.

◦Seven years after the crime, when her son was being sent to foster care, Shabnam had claimed she feared for his life, as the “people who had killed her family over a property dispute could harm him too”.

Legal options still available with Shabnam 

◦Before she is hanged, Shabnam still has some legal remedies left with her. On February 19, the day after she filed fresh mercy petitions with the Governor and the President, Shabnam’s lawyer, Advocate Shreya Rastogi, said in a statement, “Shabnam has very important constitutional remedies that remain to be exercised. These include the right to challenge the rejection of her mercy petition before the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court on various grounds and also the right to file a curative petition in the Supreme Court against the decision on the review petition.”

◦The curative petition can challenge the Supreme Court decision of January 2020, which upheld her death sentence.

◦Also, under the law, if multiple people have been sentenced to death in the same case, they have to be executed together. So, Shabnam and Saleem can be hanged only after both of them exhaust all their legal recourses. ◦Shabnam’s son ◦Shabnam’s son stayed with her in jail for the first few years of his life. In 2015, he had to be sent to foster care as according to the jail manual, women inmates can’t keep children above six years of age with them. ◦Taj now lives with journalist Usman Saifi, who was Shabnam’s college junior, and his wife Suhina.

◦Saifi had told The Indian Express in 2015: “The Shabnam you hear of, the woman on death row, is not the Shabnam I know. We went to the same college… She once paid my college fee when I couldn’t, she would help me with my notes and stand up for me in college. All this, just like an elder sister would. So when this happened, I was shocked. I told my wife that I owe a lot to Shabnam and must do this for her.”

Other women on death row in India

◦According to a 2016 report on the death penalty in India by National Law University, New Delhi, 12 women are on death row in the country, and all belong to “backward classes and religious minorities”. ◦Another case where the convicts’ mercy petitions has been rejected by the President is that of Renuka Shinde and Seema Mohan Gavit, sisters convicted of kidnapping and killing several children in Maharashtra towns between 1990 and 1996.

◦Charged along with their mother Anjana with the kidnapping of 13 children and the murder of 10 of them, they were convicted by the Supreme Court in 2006 of five of those murders, besides the kidnappings. According to the sisters’ defence counsel, the murders were committed by their mother –– who died two years after their arrest in 1996 –– and the sisters were framed by Kiran Shinde, Renuka’s husband, who turned approver.

◦The women would kidnap children to use them either as props or distractions during pickpocketing and petty thefts. Later, they would kill them. ◦The sisters were convicted by a Kolhapur sessions court in June 2001. The Bombay High Court upheld the death penalty given to them in 2004, and the Supreme Court in 2006. In 2014, then-President Pranab Mukherjee rejected their mercy petition.

Sources:

Wikipedia

Indian Express

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