New Delhi (NVI): Shabnam from Amroha district of Uttar Pradesh, who was convicted along with her lover for murdering her family in 2008, will be the first woman to face the gallows in the history of independent India.
Shabnam, who is one of the convicts in the 2008 Amroha murder case, will be executed at the country’s only female execution room in Mathura. She is currently lodged in Rampur district jail. Her lover and co-accused in the 2008 murder, Saleem is lodged in Agra prison, and will be hanged soon.
Both Shabnam and Saleem were sentenced to death in 2010 by a sessions court in UP’s Amroha. Over the next 11 years, the two convicts filed several petitions, from Allahabad high court to the Supreme Court. However, they were all rejected. The President also rejected the mercy petition. In January last year, her review petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court.
As per reports, Shabnam who hails from Amroha in UP was having a relationship with Saleem and both were planning to get married. However, Shabnam’s parents and family were not in favour. On April 15, 2008, Shabnam made her family members drink milk laced with sedatives and later slit their throats. She was also pregnant with Saleem’s child at that time.
Initially, Shabnam claimed that her house in Amroha’s Bawankhedi was attacked by unknown assailants. However, during further investigation, she confessed that she and her lover had killed the whole family.
Shabnam not only killed her parents, two brothers and their wives, but also her 10-month-old nephew. Shabnam’s uncle Sattar Ali has said that Shabnam should be hanged as she had brutally murdered seven members of her own family.
Both the murder accused will be hanged by Pawan Jallad of Meerut, who had executed the convicts in Nirbhaya’s gangrape-murder case.
-ARK
