In Nasik, Pune India a mother, daughter, Seema Mohan Gavit, and step daughter, Renuka Kiran Shinde, trio teamed up to commit crimes. The daughters were in their twenties when they started pick pocketing people. In 1990 they realized that they could use children to creat a diversion. Shinde was caught pickpocketing outside a temple and her son was with her. She used him as a defense, convincing the crowd that a woman with a child couldn’t be a thief. Shortly after this the women began abducting children and using them as a front. Most of the kidnappings took place in busy places such as temple compounds and fair grounds in cities like Nasik, Kolhapur and Pune. They were nicknamed the Sinister sisters by the news. Kiran Shinde drove the getaway car, a Fiat. Most of the kidnapped children were from poor families. The first victim was a beggar woman's one-year-old son, Santosh. The sisters used him as a distraction, if they were caught the woman carrying the child would throw them on the floor, creating a commotion while the other escaped. If the child cried or complained they would kill them. The mother was usually the one in charge of this. The sisters were caught when they visited Mohan to kidnap his second daughter in October 1996. His second wife had filed a complaint against them and their mother when her elder daughter went missing. During questioning the police found evidence of the other murders. The women were arrested on November 19, 1996. The police were able to get Shinde to crack and tell them everything, though later the women denied all the charges. On June 29, 2001, The women were charged with thirteen cases of kidnapping and nine murders. The first court found them guilty of kidnapping and murdering of six children. The high court found them guilty in five of those cases and gave them the death sentence. They did not convict them of the murder of Gavit’s son. The mother died while awaiting trail. The two daughters have exhausted their appeals, in 2014 the President of India rejected their mercy appeal.