“Posham Pa Bhai Posham Pa” is a well-known nursery rhyme in India in which children make up stories and tie knots in their own way.
Five years ago today, in 2019, a film named ‘Posham Pa’ came out, which is a heart-wrenching film based on women who murder children. It becomes even more terrifying when it is revealed that it is based on a true story.
There are many twists in this story and the famous English proverb ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’ seems true to this because the Supreme Court has to commute the death sentence of the criminals to life imprisonment because the government has delayed it so much that it could not be justified.
Actually, this is the story of three women in which the elements of poverty, destitution, deceit, and revenge are prominent.
Although the three women, mother Anjana Bai and her two daughters Renuka and Seema, were first arrested in 1996 for kidnapping and murder, the story begins when Anjana Bai, a resident of Nashik, flees to Pune with a truck driver, where they have a daughter named Renuka.
After the birth of her daughter, the truck driver leaves them in 1973 and the mother and daughter have to survive on theft and begging. During this time, Anjana meets a retired soldier named Mohan Gaut and the two get married.
Anjana Bai gives birth to a second daughter, Seema, from Mohan Gaut. But Mohan Gaut, fed up with her theft and pickpocketing habits, leaves her and marries again.
Anjana becomes lonely again, and thus a mother pushes her daughters into a world of crimes that is considered one of the most sensational cases in India.
In October 1996, Mohan Gawat’s second wife Pratibha filed a police complaint against Anjana and her daughters, alleging that the three had kidnapped and murdered her nine-year-old daughter Kranti.
The investigators arrested them but said they had never encountered a more ruthless criminal.
Suhas Nagoda, then a police inspector in the Maharashtra Criminal Investigation Department (CID), told The Indian Express in an interview: “There are two major twists in the story of Anjanabai and her two daughters, Seema Gawat and Renuka.”
The first twist came when the mother and two sisters tried to snatch a purse from the Chittarshangri temple in Pune in April 1990 and were caught, and the second twist was an accident in a market in Nashik in October 1996.
The police said that these women used to steal valuables from women at various events, festivals, and outside famous temples. Anjanabai had more than 125 petty theft cases registered against her.
According to the police, Mohan Gawat got married again in 1990, which angered Anjanabai. This anger made her, along with her daughters Renuka and Seema, plan to kill Mohan Gawat and his second wife Pratibha. This was the beginning of revenge, which later turned into the abduction and murder of children.
Suhas Nagoda was investigating the continuous abduction and murder of children in various districts of western Maharashtra, Thane, Pune, Nashik, and Kolhapur. The abducted children were all under the age of five.
During this time, Renuka got married and had a son. In April 1990, Seema and Renuka went to the Chaturashrangi temple in Pune with their son. Renuka tried to snatch a purse but was caught. On this occasion, Renuka escaped by pretending to be a child.
According to Inspector Nagoda, the second significant incident took place in 1996 when a girl named Kranti, daughter of Anjana’s husband, was abducted from Nashik.
The abduction was carried out as a revenge. Renuka and Seema picked up Kranti from her school on the pretext of introducing her to Anjanabai and then killed the girl a few months later.
According to investigators, Pratibha filed a kidnapping report against Anjanabai, Renuka, and Seema. The three women went underground to avoid police investigation. Then, a few months later, they came out with the intention of kidnapping another girl and were arrested by the police.
When the police searched their house, they found the clothes of several other children and some suspicious photographs, which revealed that these women were involved in child abduction.
The investigation also revealed that the three had kidnapped 13 children, out of which nine or 10 were killed.
But other reports say that they kidnapped and killed several dozen or more than 40 children.
Brutal murder
When the police started questioning them rigorously, Seema first confessed to the crime and then Renuka’s husband, on the offer of escape from punishment by the police, told them the story of the actions of the three, in which he himself was also involved.
Several children were brutally killed in their actions, including children named Santosh, Shraddha, Gauri, Swapnil and Pankaj. A child was killed by hitting his head against a wall, a girl was drowned in a bathroom, while a two-year-old girl was murdered in a movie theater and her body was thrown into the women’s washroom.
Human rights activist Asim Sarode, who has been closely following these cases, told a newspaper that “I was horrified when I met them. These sisters showed no remorse or shame, nor was there any hint on their faces or their tongues that whatever they had done was wrong.”
In the meantime, Anjanabai died in jail, while seeing the gravity of their crimes, the police widened the scope of the investigation and investigated several cases. During this time, statements of 156 witnesses were taken and in 2001, the Kolhapur Sessions Court found the Gaut sisters guilty of most of their crimes and sentenced them to death. The Bombay High Court upheld their conviction in 2004, and the Supreme Court upheld their death sentence in 2006.
According to police records, Anjanabai and the Gaut sisters kidnapped 13 children under the age of 5 and killed at least nine of them between 1990 and 1996, for which a case was registered against them.
Meanwhile, the Gaut sisters first appealed to the state governor and then the president for clemency, which was rejected. However, due to undue delay by the government on the clemency petitions, the Bombay High Court commuted their death sentence to life imprisonment in 2022.
Renowned author Anirban Bhattacharya has included the mother and daughters in his book ‘The Deadly Dozen: India’s Most Notorious Serial Killers’. But a review of the film says that it contains more fiction than real events.
