Two British women will spend Christmas rotting away in prison cells in far-off lands, contemplating their fates on death row.
The pair, Ramandeep Kaur Mann and Linda Carty, are both accused of murder in separate cases and have spent years fighting their sentences.
Mann was found guilty of lacing her husband’s food with sedatives before slitting his throat on a family holiday in 2016, while Carty has spent the last 20 years on death row after being convicted of killing a young mother and plotting to steal her newborn son.
Were they on British soil, they would not be facing the death penalty. But they committed their crimes in countries where capital punishment is still used.
Nearly three-quarters of all nations had abolished capital punishment in law or in practice by the end of 2025.
A total of 110 have abolished it for all crimes, nine others have abolished it for ordinary crimes and a further 23 are considered de-facto abolitionists because they have not executed anyone in a decade.
The only country on the European continent to still apply the death penalty is the former Soviet republic of Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia.
However, there are many countries around the world, including the US, India and Indonesia that still regularly carry out the death penalty for serious crimes.
Today both East and West deploy techniques that involve shock, injury and gas – in some cases leaving the condemned person to suffer for more than half an hour before dropping dead.
It is the horrific fate that these two British women are facing this Christmas.
Ramandeep Kaur Mann – Death by hanging
Mann (pictured) has been sentenced to death in India for murdering her husband so that she could inherit £2million from his life insurance policy
Arjun says he will never forgive his mother for what she did to his dad. Now 17, he has asked the Daily Mail to use only childhood photos of him for this article so he can rebuild his life
Sukhjit Singh (pictured) was murdered by his wife Ramandeep Kaur Mann in front of their nine-year-old son Arjun (middle)
Ramandeep Kaur Mann was found guilty of murdering her husband Sukhjit Singh, 34, by lacing his biryani dinner with sedatives and slitting his throat as he slept in the marital bed during a family holiday in India in 2016.
Mann, 38, from Derby, plotted to execute her husband with her lover Gurpreet Singh, his childhood friend – but the murder was witnessed by their eldest son Arjun, who was aged nine at the time.
Her son Arjun was the key prosecution witness at her trial and gave gripping testimony in court as his mother looked on.
He chillingly described how he saw his mother smother his father with a pillow before her lover hit him over the head with a hammer and she slit her husband’s throat.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Arjun, said: ‘There are not many children who watch their mother kill their father and then give evidence about it. How do you try and get on with your life after something like this?
‘I’ve had to be very brave and I’m proud of what I’ve done because I’ve got justice for my father.
‘My brother and me don’t think of this woman as my mother anymore, she’s evil.
‘We want nothing to do with her. As far as I’m concerned, she stopped being a mother to us the moment she murdered our father.’
Arjun was awoken on the night of the murder while he slept in an adjoining bed to his father
The following morning he told his grandmother what he had seen and his mother was arrested
Commenting on her death sentence, which in India is usually carried out by hanging he said: ‘I would like to be there when it happens. It doesn’t fill me with fear, in fact, it would give me a lot of satisfaction and relief and I look forward to that day. I would like all my family to be there with me.
‘I would like to see with my own eyes that justice for my father has been served. She deserves to hang because she did such an evil thing.’
Arjun was in the UK when his mother’s death sentence was announced by a judge following her trial in Shahjahan District Court in the state of Uttar Pradesh, north India.
He said: ‘I had a lot of mixed feelings when I heard about it. On one hand I felt relief and that it was right. But I wasn’t happy because I’ve still lost my father, which makes me very sad.
‘But I don’t have any sympathy for her because she’s never shown any remorse and has lied this whole time.’
Arjun was awoken on the night of the murder while he slept in an adjoining bed to his father as he did not eat the biryani laced with sedatives, which his younger brother Aaron, then aged 5, ate.
Recalling the events of the night, Arjun said: ‘I was fast asleep and then I heard a banging noise. I looked up from under the sheet and my mum was on top of my dad smothering him with a pillow.
‘Then Gurpreet, who I called “uncle Mithu” hit him over the head with a hammer. I remember the two of them then had a conversation saying “he’s still alive. We’ve got to finish him off.”
‘My mum then took the knife and slit his throat.’
Arjun revealed that since her arrest, neither he or his younger brother Aaron have ever spoken or communicated with Mann
Mann is currently languishing in Shahjahanpur District Jail and is appealing her death sentence (pictured with her husband)
As he looked on, Arjun remembered: ‘I was terrified that if I said something or tried to stop them, they might kill me. I was lying on my side under a sheet watching this horror happen.
‘Out of pure fright I just lay there, I froze. I closed my eyes, and my heart was beating really fast. None of it felt real, I couldn’t understand what I’d just seen. I was so scared.’
With his father lying next to him in a pool of blood, Arjun said that he hid under a sheet and the next thing he remembers is that it was morning.
He immediately rushed downstairs to alert his grandmother that ‘something had happened’ but was unable to tell her exactly what as he was accompanied by his mother.
Police arrived within an hour, but it was not until later that day that Arjun whispered to his grandmother what he witnessed as Mann was being spoken to by officers in a separate part of the house.
She was arrested at the family home in the village of Basantapur, north India, where they had been staying during the visit to Mr Singh’s mother.
Arjun revealed that since her arrest, neither he or his younger brother Aaron have ever spoken or communicated with Mann.
She is currently languishing in Shahjahanpur District Jail and is appealing her death sentence.
Linda Carty – Death by lethal injection
Linda Carty (pictured), 63, has been awaiting execution for 20 years after being convicted of killing young mother Joana Rodriguez and plotting to steal the victim’s newborn son, Ray, with three men
Neighbour Joana (pictured), aged 25, was kidnapped from her Houston apartment with her four-day-old son, suffocated to death and found in the boot of Carty’s car in 2001
Linda Carty, 63, has been awaiting execution for 20 years after being convicted of killing young mother Joana Rodriguez and plotting to steal the victim’s newborn son, Ray, with three men.
Neighbour Joana, aged 25, was kidnapped from her Houston apartment with her four-day-old son, suffocated to death and found in the boot of Carty’s car in 2001.
Speaking last year, Carly said she did not know how the crime unfolded, adding: ‘I can truthfully say, and I can truthfully look you in the eye, and tell you that I had nothing to do with this crime.’
The court heard Linda orchestrated the kidnap of her pregnant neighbour, Joana Rodriguez, equipped with scrubs and scissors, as she intended to cut the baby out.
Prosecutors claim Carty was so desperate for a baby that she sought to kidnap Joana and keep baby Ray for herself.
However, a TV documentary claimed last year that there are many questions over the validity of the witnesses who testified against Carty at her trial, as their stories have changed since her conviction.
But despite several applications for appeal Carty remains behind bars awaiting the death penalty.
Speaking last year, Carty said she did not know how the crime unfolded
Lynn Hardaway, former Harris County Assistant District Attorney, recalled Carty’s conviction and said: ‘I don’t have any doubt she is guilty of this crime; all the evidence was consistent and had her as the ringleader and orchestrator of the whole offence.’
Barrister Hugh Southey QC has campaigned for Carty’s release for more than a decade and said the convicted grandmother did not have sufficient, high-quality representation at the murder trial.
Prosecutors said Carty, who had been living in Houston for about 20 years by the time of her trial, recruited three men to abduct Joana and her newborn son, Ray Cabrera, in the hopes of saving her relationship with her common-law husband by passing off the child as her own. She had previously suffered several miscarriages.
Carty, a former primary school teacher, was convicted under the Texas ‘law of parties’ which dictated that a person is criminally liable if one ‘solicits, encourages, directs, aids, or attempts to aid the other person to commit the offence’.
She has maintained her innocence arguing that she was convicted largely on the word of her co-accused.
Joana and Ray were abducted from their Houston apartment on May 16, 2001.
The newborn was found unharmed in a vehicle that same day, but his mother was found dead with duct tape over her mouth and a plastic bag around her head in a car Ms Carty was leasing.
Carty (pictured) has maintained her innocence arguing that she was convicted largely on the word of her co-accused
Gerald Anderson, Chris Robinson and Carlos Williams were charged as Carty’s accomplices and received long prison terms. Carty was sentenced to death.
Carty spoke to Sky News from behind bars in Huntsville Prison, Texas, in 2012 where she claimed she was: ‘110 per cent innocent’.
She maintained that she was framed for the crime in the interview saying she felt for the victim’s family.
She said: ‘She’s somebody’s child too and she’s somebody’s daughter. So for me it’s not only a healing process for me but to show the families that the person you have been hating all these years and that you thought because the state of Texas told you this is who did it, did not commit this crime.’
She does not yet have an execution date.