How Love Forbidden Because Of Different ‘Biradari’ Made Shabnam Ali First Woman Set To Be Hanged In Independent India

Shabnam Ali, 38, is set to be the first woman to be hanged in independent India, Times of India reports. The Mathura district jail has already begun preparations for the same as the lady is convicted of killing seven members of her family.

Shabnam, who belongs to Amroha, was aged 25 at the time of this crime. She wished to marry Saleem but both belonged to different “Biradari” or caste - the “biggest hurdle” as a village elder called it.

While Shabnam was a Saifi Muslim from a well-to-do landholder family, the boy was a Pathan and worked as a daily wager. She was a double MA and Saleem was a class VI dropout.

Her family was opposed to the relationship, and in response, on 14 April 2008, Shabnam brutally murdered seven of her family members including her father, mother, and even a 10-month old nephew.

She gave milk filled with sedatives to her father, mother, two brothers, sister-in-law, cousin and her 10-month old nephew. and when everyone fell unconscious, she axed them to death.

Later on, Shabnam and Saleem were sentenced to death by a sessions court in Amroha in 2010.

Shabnam has since then approached the Allahabad High Court, the Supreme Court, the President and the apex court again in order to overturn the death penalty.

Her review petition was dismissed by the SC in January 2020 but Shabnam has reportedly not exhausted every judicial remedy yet.

Previously, the likes of Renuka Shinde, Seema Gavit and Ramshri have been sentenced to death in the country.

Shinde and Gavit, step-sisters, are still on a death row for kidnapping 13 children and killing at least five of them.

Ramshri, a woman from Lucknow, was sentenced to death in 1998 but she gave birth to a child in prison and hence she was commuted to life imprisonment instead.

The first female hanging house was built in Mathura jail almost 150 years ago, but no woman has been executed there since Independence.

Regarding Shabnam’s case, Mathura senior jail superintendent Shailendra Maitrey told TOI, “We have not received any death warrant but have started preparing … Last year in February, the executioner, Pawan Jallad, had inspected the hanging house. He said that there was a problem with the structure of the gallows. We are fixing that now. We have also just ordered two hanging ropes from Bihar’s Buxar central jail.”