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Renuka Shinde was a poor teenage mother when she tried to steal a purse during a crowded festival at a temple in India.

Caught in the act, Shinde feigned outrage and showed her accusers her young son. Would a thief take their child along, she asked. The crowd at the temple in Pune, 150 kilometres south-east of Mumbai, let her go.

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The experience spawned an idea in Shinde that would lead her and her sister to become India’s most notorious serial killers.

They kidnapped up to 13 children, using some of them to cover their crimes and teaching others to pick pockets. But when they became too troublesome, the children were murdered.

Now Shinde and her sister, Seema Gavit, are to become the first women to be executed in India after the country’s president rejected their final appeal for mercy.

This is indeed one of the rarest of the rare cases where the perpetrators deserve the death sentence

“While I’m professionally and personally against the capital punishment, this is indeed one of the rarest of the rare cases where the perpetrators deserve the death sentence,” human rights lawyer and activist Asim Sarode told The Hindu newspaper.