Retired hangman called back in India

CALCUTTA, India - An 84-year-old hangman, helped by his son and grandson, has been brought out of retirement to carry out the first execution in nine years in India, where the death penalty is reserved for "the rarest of rare cases."

Dhananjay Chatterjee, who was executed before dawn today, had been on death row since his 1991 conviction for raping and smothering a 14-year-old girl, Hetal Parekh, who lived in the apartment building where he worked as a security guard.

Chatterjee, 39, had maintained his innocence and lawyers appealed twice to the Supreme Court and sought clemency from two Indian presidents. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam turned down the final clemency plea last week and the Supreme Court rejected an appeal Thursday, saying it was without merit, exhausting Chatterjee's final appeal.

Execution is rare in India, though several convicts have been sentenced to death in the past decade. Appeals can take years or even decades. India's last execution was in 1995, when an auto-rickshaw driver convicted in the serial murders of prostitutes was hanged in southern Tamil Nadu state.

Just before 4:30 a.m. today, Chatterjee walked out of Cell No. 3 in the Alipora Correctional Home where he had spent the past 13 years in solitary confinement and followed a concrete path to the wooden gallows in a courtyard.

Hangman Nata Mullick performed the last hanging in West Bengal state on Aug. 21, 1991. That execution was in another Calcutta jail, and no one at the Alipora prison remembers the last time its gallows were used.

So the iron lever and footboard had to be tested repeatedly, and the rope waxed with soap and ripe bananas, Mullick said. He carried out several trial hangings with sandbags weighing the same as Chatterjee.

"Criminals like Chatterjee ought to be hanged so that others don't commit such crimes," said Mullick, a third generation hangman who has carried out 24 hangings. "I'm only making society safer."

His price for the hanging: $435 and a post for his grandson as a maintenance worker at the jail for $56 a month.

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