State to oppose Seema Gavit’s parole

Maharashtra opposes parole for Gavit sisters, convicted of kidnapping and murdering children, citing flight risk. Court gives state three weeks to respond.

The state government has decided to oppose the parole of the Gavit sisters – Seema Gavit and Renuka Shinde – serving a life term each for the kidnapping and murder of children in Maharashtra three decades ago. Principal secretary (jails) Radhika Rastogi said, “The state will oppose the plea.” The state believes the Gavits are a flight risk.

State to oppose Seema Gavit’s parole

On Tuesday, the Bombay High Court gave the state three weeks to respond to Seema’s petition seeking parole. A separate petition filed by Renuka is also being heard by the court. Both sisters are lodged in Pune’s Yerawada Jail.

The Gavit sisters – the first women to receive the death sentence in Independent India – were convicted in 2001 along with their mother Anjanabai for kidnapping 13 children and killing five. They would use the children as bait in their begging racket. They also used them as a distraction, and leveraged their innocence to help get them off the hook whenever they were caught.

The sisters and their mother operated in Pune, Thane, Kolhapur, Kalyan and Nashik between 1990 and 1996, until they were caught in Nashik in 1996. The investigation revealed that the mother and daughters had killed five children in an unspeakably brutal manner. Anjanabai died in jail in the 1990s.

The Gavit sisters had filed mercy petitions before then President of India Pranab Mukherjee, who rejected their plea to commute their death penalty. The Gavits moved the Bombay High Court, which in 2022 cited the delay in deciding on their mercy petitions as grounds for commuting their death sentence to life imprisonment for the remainder of their natural lives.

Earlier this week, however, a division bench comprising Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Neela Desai of the Bombay High Court asked the state jails department to reply to Seema Gavit’s plea, seeking parole (Parole or furlough is leave granted to every convict to meet their families or to address personal matters).

However, the state home department believes the Gavits are a flight risk and has decided to oppose the Seema’s plea. Earlier, additional director general of police (prisons) Prashant Burde had rejected the Gavits’ pleas for parole.

While hearing Renuka’s petition, the court had observed that the key question was whether the Supreme Court’s directive—sentencing the Gavit sisters to life imprisonment without remission—would exclude their eligibility for parole or furlough, which are considered part of the remission system.

A senior officer of the jails department said the Gavits had been arrested with great difficulty and it had taken a while for them to confess to their crimes. “We will not allow any furlough,” said the official.