India’s last hangman

An executioner’s tale

A dying family business

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Readers' comments



Everyone who takes pride in India's low execution rate need to keep in mind that Amnesty International and numerous other international agencies have spilt much ink over the very high number of extrajudicial executions in India.


It is great to move towards a society where there is no capital punishment, but in many Asian and Latin American countries, the extra judicial killings are what would claim much more lives than capital punishment. Such is the scale of these killings that it makes the very process of imprisonment, prosecution and capital punishment appear as a luxury of the developed world.

The situation with criminal courts in UP and the state of crime has not improved over past decades. In a state where policemen work with the criminals and lawmakers are not ashamed to admit their criminal backgrounds, one definitely cannot breathe a sigh of relief with diminishing capital punishment cases.

The sense of relief might instead come from the fact that capital punishment is not given to political dissidents any more, the way it was towards the end of British rule in India. Clearly, the judiciary has improved.

Nothing else, however, seems to have improved. The caste boundaries hinder law enforcement in UP (and many other states) and the politicians are selected on basis of caste. There is affirmative action for lower castes, but eventually everyone clusters in their castes in all levels of administration. That is not going to help bring social equality.

One can easily blame the British for the legacy of colonial oppression, but after all judiciary itself, which can improve things in a caste-ridden society worsening with economic inequality, was set up by the British.

Lord Cornwallis, the British governor-general who made Indian law more humane than what existed in England at the time, is buried only 200 miles away from Lucknow in UP. Sadly, very few have visited his tomb.


India's capital punishment system is in shambles but its output is good. When I see the huge numbers posted by China and the US, I often think how many innocents (by innocent, they might have committed a crime but not the crime they were accused of - a normal result of plea bargaining one party against another with under educated, under lawyered defendants) have been killed. Then I look at Norway and can't believe that maniac is still alive preaching to us.

India seems to have the number right - maybe a few more needed.

I would propose capital punishment is abolished in all the states - where corruption, caste and religion - can be complex. Keep it at the federal law and focus on crimes against the state. Someone who has a crime of passion and murders may be ok to release after 30 years. Someone who has gone around Mumbai shooting random people crying glory to god has really no moral compass- better just to terminate.


I oppose death sentences not because there are no criminals who deserve it. There are many who probably deserve more than death. There are people who commit heinous crimes. But how can we guarantee that innocents may not be victimized by judicial errors? There are a number of instances where people who are sentenced to death (and even executed) are latter found innocent. Of course the implication of judicial error applies to all other less severe punishments. But the consequence is too much when a person's life is at stake.

medicherla ravi

In india those who deserve mercy are killed (by police ,army at the behest of politicians) and those who don't deserve mercy are spared by politicians.

No Mist

i am all for keeping the death penalty for the most gruesome cases. India's policy of death penalty for the 'rarest of the rare' is wise but misguided.

'rarest of the rare' should be changed to 'most heinous'. maybe that is what they mean.

No Mist in reply to No Mist

And oh yes ! Kasab sure deserves death ... not just one but hundred. I am for keeping him in prison for 60 years and then hanging. Let him see his life go waste before his eyes.

November in reply to No Mist

sixty years in prison will give pro Kashmiri jihadis plenty of time to plan and execute a hijacking, with more bloodshed, to have Kasaab released. Why don't you just do it Chinese style:

Cricket stadium.... blindfold...kneel down...bullet in back of head.... bill Pakistani government for bullet.


I don't care about anything else really your points of view on the effect, statistics, the Hindu's altruistic verses, Human Rights....All I want is Ajmal Kasab to be hanged.
Too many innocent people- children, babies, infirm and helpless were killed by that beast. Such things are not humans or life-forms they hold within themselves all the dark matter, evil and negative forces. They have to be terminated.
I am willing to make a concession though - feed him alive to the pigs.


At least anybody sentenced to death by the courts in India has a right to defend oneself in a court of law. However, most people killed by the Indian state happens not at the hangman's noose but at the hands of police. The police murder people in cold blood but claim that they were shot dead in a gunfight (referred to as an encounter). They also murder people in cold blood under the pretext that the murdered were on the verge of committing a terrorist act or an assassination.

The policemen who commit these murders often are rewarded for their 'bravery'. They either get promotions, monetary rewards or gallantry medals. The victims' relatives rarely, if ever, get justice.

Unless these extra-judicial murders by the state cease, India cannot claim that it very rarely applies the death penalty.

MoveBucket in reply to Auspalm

There is something called Human Rights Commission in India. Pleade ignorance and go figure it out..

Even world's most prized democracy has lot of this kind of prison abuse and extra-judicial murders not to say of being leader of judicial murder only next to China.

No Mist in reply to Auspalm

But certainly the Human Rights Commission of your favorite nation (fill in any one of US, UK, China, Russia or Australia - you are an aussie, aren't you ?) can bring back the life of the dead or bring back the years spent in prison.

MoveBucket in reply to Auspalm


Here's what an excerpt:

New Delhi, February 6th, 2012"

For more details you can see:

Every country and democracy has her own set of problems:

Even the developed countries also has extensive issues as illustrated below:




An extinguished life cannot ever be restored, even if new facts come to light after the judgement is carried out.

The responsibility of the state should be to provide services for the greater common good (enforce contracts, ensure safety of drinking water, grants for research in sciences, policing etc, which there is no immediate profit motive for), in return for taxes paid by citizens.

Murdering its citizens cannot be one of the responsibilities of the state. Putting criminals behind bars, and for heinous crimes, behind bars even for life is ok, killing is not.

As an Indian, I'm satisfied that the death penalty hasn't been carried out in India for over a decade. I'll be happy only when it is completely abolished. No ifs, buts, rarest of rares, no exceptions.

D. Sherman in reply to PaxIndica

I don't disagree with you, as far as it goes, but the danger in replacing execution with life sentences is that the wrongfully convicted will simply disappear from society and and die in prison anyway. The death penalty has the effect of getting the public's attention, and making it possible to get serious pro bono legal help to prove the innocence of the condemned people who are in fact innocent. It provides a sense of urgency.

Given the number of condemned people who have been proven innocent in recent years, and given the unusual care with which capital cases are usually tried, one would expect an even higher rate of wrongful conviction in less serious cases. Bear in mind that even relatively mild crimes these days can bring sentences of 40-50 years, which is effectively a sentence to die in prison in most cases.

I hope that all progressive governments will continue to improve the fairness of their criminal justice systems and not simply think that because they have abolished capital punishment it's not a big deal to imprison an innocent person occasionally.

FlameZ in reply to D. Sherman

The judicial system in India is fair.


FlameZ in reply to D. Sherman

The judicial system in India is fair.



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