[1][2] In association with their mother Anjanabai, they were active in various cities in western Maharashtra – Pune, Thane, Kalyan, Kolhapur, and Nashik.
[1] The trio were arrested in November 1996, along with Renuka's husband Kiran Shinde, who later turned approver and was pardoned.
Because of this delay in seeking a decision on their mercy petitions, the Bombay High Court ultimately commuted their death sentence to life imprisonment in 2022.
[1] Elder sister Renuka got married in 1989 to Kiran Shinde, a tailor working in Pune, at a temple near Shirdi.
To silence him, Anjanabai bashed his head against an electric pole, with the others reportedly "witnessing the killer eating Wada-pav".
[3][1] The children were mostly killed when they wouldn't stop crying, with post-mortems indicating injuries from being thrown downstairs or hit repeatedly.
[5] In October 1996, a police complaint was filed in Nashik against the trio by Pratibha, the second wife of Anjanabai's former husband Mohan Gavit.
[5][1] As the investigation began, the family went underground, but the police arrested them on 19 November as they reappeared and tried to kidnap Pratibha and Mohan's younger daughter.
A search team sent to their house in Nashik uncovered evidence of more kidnappings such as discarded clothing of children.
[3] He provided details of how the crimes were committed and bodies disposed of, and of the roles played by Anjanabai, Renuka and Seema.
They contended that the President took more than five years to reject their mercy petitions when such a plea should have been disposed of within three months, and this had forced them to live under the constant fear of death.
The Maharashtra home department maintained that there was no unreasonable delay on part of the state, that the time elapsed was a result of following the required procedure at each level, and that the file on their mercy petitions had to be reconstructed after it was destroyed in a June 2012 fire at its headquarters, the Mantralaya.
[4][2][3][7] The judges also stated that the sisters' crimes were "heinous", that they were "a menace to society", and thus they will remain lodged at Pune's Yerwada Jail for the rest of their natural lives.
[1][5] In 2019 the case was included as one of the cases in the true-crime bestselling book The Deadly Dozen: India's Most Notorious Serial Killers by Anirban Bhattacharyya, the creator-producer of the hit TV show Savdhaan India The 2019 Hindi film Posham Pa was based on the lives and crimes of the family.