Court sentences Ludhiana woman to death for killing neighbour’s child

On the day of the killing, Kaur abducted Dilroz from a lane near her home at 2.15pm, driving the toddler on a scooter 13 kilometers away to Salem Tabri, where she buried her alive in a pre-dug pit

 A Ludhiana court on Thursday sentenced a 38-year-old woman to death for the killing of her two-year-old neighbour, whom she buried alive in 2021 after an argument with the toddler’s family.

Police personnel taking Neelam murder convict to court before the judgment, in Ludhiana on Thursday. (Gurpreet Singh/Hindustan Times)

Judge Munish Singal ordered Neelam Kaur be hanged for the November 28, 2021 murder of Dilroz Kaur, the daughter of police constable Harpreet Singh.

“This Court is of the firm opinion that the present case falls within the purview of ‘rarest of rare cases’ and calls for imposition of the capital punishment upon the convict and any lesser sentence would do grave injustice not only to the victim and her family but to the collective conscience of the society as well,” the judgment said.

“We had urged the court to consider this a barbaric incident and impose the death penalty,” said Parupkar Singh Ghumman, a senior advocate representing Dilroz’s family.

Neelam, a divorced mother of two sons aged 8 and 10, was convicted on Tuesday after arguments concluded. She feuded with Dilroz’s family, police said, because they reprimanded her sons for misbehaviour in the Shimlapuri neighbourhood.

When Dilroz’s grandfather Shaminder Singh reported her missing a half-hour later, Kaur joined the search. She confessed after being confronted with surveillance video showing her leaving with the child, the lawyer said.

Neelam’s counsel argued for leniency because the accused is a woman and, also, on possibility of her reform. But the court rejected the argument.

“I have considered this much stressed argument but I am not convinced with the same because merely being woman is not the mitigating circumstance in her favour,” Singal said.

“The accused Neelam is a menace to the society and she continues to be so and cannot be reformed,” the judge added.

While the death penalty remains on the books in India, executions are rare and many capital punishment sentences are commuted by higher courts.

The closest any female death row convict came to be executed were half sisters Seema Gavit and Renuka Shinde, who were given the capital punishment for the serial killings of several children whom they had abducted to make them beg. In 2022, the Supreme Court commuted their sentence due to a long delay before their mercy petitions were rejected in 2014.

According to advocacy group Project 39A, there were 14 women on the death row among 539 at the end of 2022.

At the end of 2022, the latest year for which death row estimates were available, 14 women were among 539 awaiting execution.