In 2006, they were convicted by the Supreme Court of five of those murders. Since then, a Damocles sword has been hanging over the fate of the duo, set to earn notoriety as the first women to be hanged in the history of Independent India. The sisters, lodged at Yerwada Jail, were notified about the rejection of their mercy petition verbally earlier in August and the 14-day buffer period before their execution ends this Saturday. The sisters, Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit were sentenced to death in 2001 for kidnapping 13 children and killing nine of them between June 1990 and October 1996. Women, who are lodged in Yerwada jail, killed kids between 1990 and 1996. Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Sarode, who, at one time, assisted the Apex Court judge with the case, recounts the eerie calmness with which Renuka Shinde answered his questions about the murders, all the time stroking a stray cat. Files appeal 
 
 
 
 Following the end of the buffer period, the duo has filed an appeal at the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. “The case against the sisters primarily rests on the statement of Renuka’s husband, Kiran Shinde, who turned approver naming Anjana as having carried out the kidnappings and killings.
– Serial killer sisters, who kidnapped and murdered at least five children, are poised to become the first women hanged in India, reports the Washington Post. “This is indeed one of the rarest of the rare cases where the perpetrators deserve the death sentence,” a human rights lawyer tells the Hindu. Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit were charged in 2001 with 13 kidnappings and 10 murders, and convicted of five killings, reports the Telegraph. Their killing spree began in 1990 when the girls were teen pickpockets and their mother told them to kidnap her ex's daughter, their half-sister. After that, mother and daughters kidnapped street kids ages 1 to 5, turned them into pickpockets and decoys, then killed them. Their mother died in prison, the Mumbai Mirror reports. Some of the sisters' ghastly crimes: They killed an infant by bashing his head against an electric pole, dropped a 7-month old to stop its crying, bludgeoned a boy while he hung upside down, and dismembered another and stuffed his parts in a bag, the Post reports. The killing ended as it began—with a revenge kidnapping and murder in 1996, also plotted by their mother as revenge against her ex. The 9-year-old, his daughter, was dumped in a field and an eventual investigation led to the sisters' other crimes. The sisters say they're innocent and wrongly convicted. A recent plea for mercy was rejected.