No instance of woman being hanged in 20 years

If death sentence is imposed in the "rarest of rare cases", its execution is even rarer.

The last time anybody has been hanged in an Indian jail was in 2004, when Dhananjoy Chatterjee was executed in Kolkata for raping and murdering a 14-year-old girl. This was the first hanging since 1995, when Auto Shankar was executed in Chennai.

Though courts have imposed death penalty on women, most of those sentences have been commuted and there is no instance of any woman being hanged in at least the last two decades.

Sonia, who is on the death row in Ambala Central jail, may become the first woman to be hanged this century as she herself in February asked for her mercy petition to the President to be rejected.

Subsequently, the home ministry recommended to the President to reject Sonia's mercy petition. She and her husband Sanjeev had been awarded death sentence for killing eight persons, including her MLA father, for inheriting family property.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/No-instance-of-woman-being-hanged-in-20-years/articleshow/4865481.cms