A court in Kerala on Monday sentenced 24-year-old Greeshma SS to death sentence after finding her guilty of murdering her boyfriend Sharon Raj in 2022. Greeshma was also sentenced to 10 years in prison for abduction and an additional five years for trying to mislead the investigation.

In the past, only a handful of women have been awarded death sentences in India and the execution of the order remains nil. With 561 prisoners, 2023 saw the highest population on death row in nearly two decades, as per the Annual Statistics Report 2023. As many as 488 prisoners from the total death row population were awaiting judgment from the High Courts, it added. 

Shabnam Ali

Shabnam Ali is touted as the first woman who may be hanged in independent India. Shabnam is accused of killing seven members of her own family, including her 10-month-old nephew, while she was pregnant in 2008. 

Shabnam, who was 22 at the time of the murders, committed the crime along with her lover Saleem. They lived in the same village but their families did not approve of their relationship.

They were convicted and sentenced to death by a Sessions Court in Amroha in 2010. Their death sentences were upheld by the Allahabad High Court in 2013, and by the Supreme Court of India in 2015. The Supreme Court dismissed their review petitions in 2020, on the grounds that the case merits capital punishment.

Shabnam’s legal team argued that she is a casualty of a “patriarchal society that puts caste above all else”. Shabnam gave birth to her son in prison.

However, some media reports claim that Rattan Bai Jain was the only woman to have been executed, back in 1955 for killing three girls. But there were no official records available to verify the information.

Ram Shree

Ram Shree was sentenced to death in 1997 for killing four members of a rival family in 1989. The National Commission for Women pleaded that since she had a three-year-old child she should be spared capital punishment, following which the Supreme Court stayed her execution and overturned it in August 1998. The court noted that her case did not fall in the rarest of the rare category, and awarded her life imprisonment instead.

Ram Shri was charged along with her father Panchhi, brother Manmohan and mother Pan Kanwar.

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Neha Verma

Neha Verma, who was aged 25 back then, was awarded death penalty along with two others in 2013 for the robbery and murder of three women from the same family. Neha was a beautician who lived in Indore and befriended one of the women in the family. On 19th June 2011, she killed the three women to earn easy money. The victims were shot and stab wounds covered their entire bodies.

A local court termed the crime as “rarest of the rare”. The judge in his 44-page judgment said, “For the greed of some rupees, three hapless women of a family were killed in a very cruel manner….The culprits deserve no mercy.”

Sonal

The Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2018 confirmed the death penalty to one Sonal alias Sonu for the murder of seven of her family members in Rohtak. Sonam and her lover Navin who belonged to the same clan were having an affair. The duo killed Sonam’s family members apprehending that they would not accept their relationship.

The court spoke of how “a woman by its very nature is merciful”.

Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit

Sisters Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit, who were in their 40s, were granted death sentence for kidnapping 13 young children and killing five of them between 1990 and 1996. They were sentenced to death in June 2001. The then President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, rejected their mercy petitions. The women killed nine of these 13 children, disposing of the bodies of at least five in different places in Kolhapur district. They were arrested by the Kolhapur police in October 1996, Hindustan Times reported.

Renuka’a husband Kiran Shinde was a co-accused before he was made the approver in the case and testified for the prosecution instead. Kiran claimed to be a “silent spectator” to the crime. 

Nalini Sriharan

Nalini, one of the convicts in the 1991 Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, was arrested in June 1991 when she was pregnant. She gave birth to a girl a month later in jail but was sentenced to death by the trial court in 1998. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1999. 

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi had appealed to then President KR Narayanan demanding mercy for Nalini as she had a young daughter. After this, then Tamil Nadu Governor Fathima Beevi commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment in 2000.