Executed In Silence In Abu Dhabi: A Sad Day For Humanity

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 5 March 2025 Shahzadi Sabbeer Khan (30), a caregiver from Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district who was sentenced to death last year in the United Arab Emirates for the alleged murder of a four-month-old infant, was executed on February 15, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) informed the Delhi High Court on Monday. I'm terribly sad to read this news. Shahzadi Khan was executed on February 15, 2025. (X) ------ Executing a poor woman, who got no proper legal assistance in the UAE, is criminal. She was forced to confess, tortured and executed in silence at a prison in Abu Dhabi. This is injustice. First of all, all executions must be abolished. Now when the civilised world is abolishing capital punishment, uncouth and uncivilised Muslim countries are not just hanging men but also women. Iran is on an execution spree, hanging men as well as women. Execution of any person is shuddersome, regardless of the gender of the victim, but when a woman is hanged, it underlines the inherent cruelty and savagery of a community, country, group of people or race. When Rattan Bai Jain was hanged at Tihar Jail in Delhi in 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru said that he was terribly anguished and distraught. Newspapers wrote in their editorials that hanging a woman was against the ethos of humanity and universal spirit of forgiveness. By the way, Rattan Bai Jain is widely recognized as the first woman to be executed in independent India. Fortunately, since her execution, there haven't been any known cases of a woman being hanged in India, though I'm not very sure whether there was also a woman hanged between 1963 and 1973 because there are no definite records of hangings and the genders of executed convicts available during that period. Research by the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) has located government records of 1,422 executions in 16 states in the decade from 1953 to 1963 alone. Gender of the convicts was not mentioned in any execution. Coming back to poor Shahzadi's hanging in UAE, the government of India should have intervened to save her life. It didn't and she was led to the gallows. Perhaps, being a Muslim, the government didn't try tooth and nail and she was abandoned. A sad day for humanity. ---- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/executed-abu-dhabi-sad-day-humanity/d/134786 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism