Indian worker executed in UAE over child’s death

An Indian woman was executed in Abu Dhabi after being convicted of killing her employer’s child – a charge that her family denies. 

Shahzadi Khan, 33, was executed on 15 February, her family were informed on Monday. 

The Indian external affairs ministry informed Delhi high court that they received confirmation of Khan’s execution from UAE authorities last week. 

It came after her father Shabbir Khan had petitioned the Delhi court to ascertain information on his daughter’s condition. 

Shahzadi Khan travelled to Abu Dhabi in 2021 from her village in Uttar Pradesh, after an Indian businessman on Facebook offered her the promise of a better future in the Gulf country. 

She believed that future would involve medical treatment for severe burns she suffered as a child. 

However, when she arrived in November 2021, she found that she had been “sold” to a married Indian couple as a bonded labourer, her father told The Independent. 

Her main responsibility was to care for the couple’s newborn child. 

The child died in February 2022, and the couple immediately accused Khan of being responsible. 

According to court documents, Khan was accused of asphyxiating the child because she was angry over “mistreatment and nondelivery of salaries”. 

Khan and her family strongly denied the allegations, and have stated that the baby died from an incorrect vaccination received earlier that day. Khan’s father told The Independent that no autopsy was carried out.

He also said that his daughter was forced to sign a false confession, which led to her conviction.

She was sentenced to death by an Abu Dhabi court in July 2023. 

Khan’s last phone call with her family was on 13 February, during which she said she may be executed imminently. She was put to death two days later.

In an interview with the Press Trust of India, her father said she was not granted justice.

“I tried a lot with the Indian government. I had been running around since last year. We did not have the money to go [to Abu Dhabi],” he said. 

“The lawyers were expensive and the government did not support us.”

In an earlier interview to the BBC, Khan’s employer said: “Shahzadi brutally and intentionally killed my son which is already proven by the United Arab Emirates authorities in the light of all the evidence.

“Misleading information has been provided to media and other authorities to gain sympathy and shift the focus from the actual crime which she committed.”

Last month, India’s government informed parliament that 54 Indians were facing execution abroad, of whom 29 were in the UAE.

According to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, several individuals are currently under sentence of death in the UAE. The last known execution before Khan’s was that of a man accused of raping and killing an eight-year-old boy. He was executed in 2017.