Mumbai, Aug 31: It started as personal vendetta and soon turned into a profession.

Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit abducted their first victim in 1990, police said. It was the elder daughter of their father’s second wife.

The sisters, whose death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court today, went on a kidnapping spree after that. All their victims were little children, some of whom were killed, and the hand that rocked the crime cradle was their 58-year-old mother’s.

Anjanabai Gavit, a resident of Kothrud in Pune, was never an average housewife. There are 125 cases lodged against her for petty thefts like picking pockets and snatching gold chains at crowded railway stations.

But the small-time criminal turned cold-blooded kidnapper when her husband Mohan left her to marry another woman named Pratima in 1990. Along with daughters Renuka and Seema and Renuka’s husband Kiran Shinde, Anjanabai, then aged 58, plotted to abduct Mohan and Pratima’s first daughter.

The second daughter was to be kidnapped in 1996, but police caught up with her and her family.

The six years in between saw Anjanabai mastermind the kidnappings of a dozen children in Nashik, Pune and Kolhapur.

Investigations revealed that the family would take the abducted children along to distract attention while they carried out petty crimes — and to win the police’s sympathy if caught. But when the kids outgrew their utility or stood in the family’s way, they were done away with.

Kiran, who turned approver in the case, gave the police an account of the torture inflicted on the children.

Santosh, barely 18 months old, began crying one evening at a bus stand. Fearing he would draw people’s attention, the women banged his head against the floor and then an iron pole till he died. His body was thrown under an autorickshaw. Another 18-month-old, Bhavna, was gagged, bundled into a handbag and dumped in the ladies’ toilet of a cinema.

Two-year-old Naresh was starved and beaten to death because he would wail for his mother. Three-year-old Pankaj made an even bigger mistake. He would talk to passers-by about his parents. So he was hung upside down from the ceiling and his head slammed against a wall.

The drive for personal revenge came back to haunt the family in 1996, when the sisters set out to claim their 14th victim — their second step-sister. But this time, they landed in the police net.

The Gavits and the Shindes were lodged in Yerwada prison, where Anjanabai died a year later.

The trial began in September 1998, and three years later, Kolhapur additional district and sessions judge G.L. Yedke awarded the death penalty to Renuka and Seema in a crowded courtroom.

Charges were dropped against Renuka’s husband Kiran, who had testified against the women.

The couple have four children of their own. They were handed over to Kiran’s Pune-based mother.