New Delhi: Two weeks after her last call to her parents, the Ministry of External Affairs informed the Delhi High Court that a 33-year-old Indian national on death row had been executed in the United Arab Emirates.
On Monday, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma told the court during a hearing on a petition filed by Shahzadi Khan’s father that she had been executed last month.
“It is over. She was executed on February 15. Her last rites will be held on March 5,” he said, as quoted by PTI.
Her father had approached the court seeking information about her status after she was arrested in February 2023 for allegedly murdering a four-month-old child.
Later, the MEA’s external publicity division confirmed that “UAE authorities intimated to the (Indian) Embassy on February 28, 2025, that the sentence of Ms. Shahzadi has been carried out in accordance with local laws”. The family has been informed, it added.
The MEA also stated that the Indian embassy had extended all possible legal assistance, including “sending mercy petitions and pardon requests to the Government of the UAE”.
However, it remains unclear why there was a delay in the Indian government receiving confirmation of Shahzadi’s execution.
On February 16, Shabbir Khan, the father, went to the media seeking help after receiving a call from his daughter a day earlier, in which she said she would be hanged within 24 hours in a Dubai jail.
“Abba, this is my last call. I have now been shifted to another room. Maybe, I can’t call you again,” she told him, according to a report by India News.
The following day, official sources dismissed the report as “incorrect.”
“The Embassy has confirmed this from the UAE authorities. A review petition in her case has been filed, and the matter is under consideration. The Embassy continues to follow up on the case,” the sources said on February 17.
There is still no clarity on how the Indian embassy claimed on February 17 that she was alive, despite her execution having taken place two days earlier.
In recent years, India has developed strong ties with the UAE, particularly at the political leadership level. However, that appears to have had little impact in this case, with the official view suggesting that given the victim was a UAE citizen, the chances securing a reprieve were always slim.
In his petition before the Delhi high court, Khan, a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district, stated that there was “profound uncertainty” regarding his daughter Shahzadi’s situation and his repeated applications to the Ministry of External Affairs for clarification had yielded no response.
The petition noted, “On February 14, 2025, the petitioner’s daughter telephoned him from detention, informing him that she had been relocated within the facility and that, prior to her potential execution, her final wish was to speak with her parents.”
“The petitioner, with considerable effort, submitted an application dated February 21, 2025, to the Ministry of External Affairs, seeking to ascertain the current legal status of his daughter and confirm whether she remains alive or has been executed,” it added.
The Union government’s counsel informed the court that embassy officials had been in touch with the petitioner and that arrangements were being made for the family to attend Shahzadi’s last rites in Abu Dhabi. “We did our best. We hired a law firm there to represent her in court. But the laws there deal with the murder of an infant very severely,” he submitted.
The plea stated that Shahzadi had travelled to Abu Dhabi in December 2021 on a legal visa.
In August 2022, her employer gave birth to a son, for whom Shahzadi was employed as a caregiver. On December 7, 2022, the infant received routine vaccinations and tragically passed away that evening.
