Thanks to Dorina Lisson for a heads-up on this report. My anti-death penalty friend sent me a DPA news service dispatch, but the one she sent included a line – ‘No one wants to be an executioner’ – that I could not find in any of the DPA dispatches that I was able to google up on this story. Apparently someone not associated with DPA inserted that sentence into the report.
I am sure the reason authorities cannot find a hangman is simply because India has not executed anyone in seven years and there simply aren’t any official executioners left ‘hanging’ around.
The statement that no one wants to be an executioner implies that India cannot find anyone willing to hang a cold blooded murderer. Now that’s pure hogwash! The authorities cannot just simply drag anyone off the street to ask if he wants to be a hangman and then say, ‘OK, now you’re our official hangman.’ – that’s a skill an executioner has to be thoroughly trained in.
With so many Indians living in abject poverty, there must be many thousands of people who would jump at the chance to earn a few rupees by serving as an executioner.
NO HANGMAN TO CARRY OUT EXECUTIONS
Gulf Times
May 31, 2011
New Delhi -- India’s first executions in seven years are likely to be delayed because authorities are unable to find a hangman, officials said yesterday.
President Pratibha Patil last week rejected mercy petitions from two men, clearing the way for the country’s first hangings since 2004.
But prison authorities are unprepared due to the lack of executioners.
“The hangman is not available. Prison authorities have requested other states (to supply one) but we have not got a positive response so far,” Jorhat jail superintendent Paresh Chandra Koch said.
“Until we find a hangman, the execution will be delayed.”
Mahendra Nath Das has been on death row since 1997 for committing a murder in the northeastern state of Assam.
Sikh militant Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar was sentenced to death in 2001 for his role in a bombing in Delhi in 1993 that left nine people dead.
Das is in jail in Assam’s Jorhat city but since the state does not employ a hangman, there is no date fixed for his execution.
Qualified executioners are scarce because there have been only two hangings in the past 15 years. – DPA
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And here is the Associated Press report on this story from the June 1 issue of The Straits Times:
RARE EXECUTION IN INDIA PROMPTS SEARCH FOR HANGMAN
GAUHATI -- MAHENDRA Nath Das was convicted of a murder so gruesome India's courts gave him a rare death sentence and the president rejected his plea for clemency. Only one thing is keeping him from the gallows: There is no hangman.
It has been more than two decades since any convict was executed in the state of Assam, and with no qualified executioners remaining, officials in this north-eastern state are scouring the rest of the country for a candidate.
In all of India, where the death penalty is handed down in only the 'rarest of rare' cases, there have been only two hangings in the past 15 years.
Das' conviction for publicly decapitating a victim with a machete could make his the third.
The last hanging took place in 2004, when a security guard was hanged in a Kolkata jail for the rape and murder of a teenage girl.
Nata Mullick, India's most famous hangman who died in 2009, came out of retirement at age 84 to carry out that execution, earning US$435 (S$535) and a job for his grandson as a maintenance worker at the jail. A third generation hangman, Mullick executed 25 of the 55 people who have died on the gallows since India gained independence in 1947. -- AP
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