Preparations Before Hanging – Indian History

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Capital punishment is a legal death penalty in India. It has been carried out in five instances since 1995,while a total of twenty-six executions have taken place in India since 1991.
National Law University, Delhi examined 1,414 prisoners who were executed, in the available list of convicts hanged in post-Independence since 1947.According to a report of the Law Commission of India (1967), the total number of cases in which the death sentence was awarded in India from 1953-63 was 1410.

On 31 August 2015, the Law Commission of India submitted a report to the government which recommended the abolition of capital punishment for all crimes in India, excepting the crime of waging war against the nation or for terrorism-related offences.
At least 100 people in 2007, 40 in 2006, 77 in 2005, 23 in 2002, and 33 in 2001 were sentenced to death (but not executed), according to Amnesty International figures. No official statistics of those sentenced to death have been released. About 26 mercy petitions are pending before the president, some of them from 1992

These include approaching a prison in Bihar for gallows rope, writing to other states for services of hangmen, and inspections of the courtyard as well as the equipment that will be used to carry out the execution.
Pawan Gupta, Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh are on death row for the gang rape and murder of the 23-year-old woman who was tortured on a bus that she and a friend boarded in south Delhi’s Munirka. A fifth adult suspect in the case, Ram Singh, purportedly committed suicide in prison before the trial ended and a sixth was a minor at the time of the crime.

Sources in Tihar, Asia’s largest prison, say special ropes for the execution are being brought from a jail in Bihar’s Buxar, which also sent ropes for the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru in 2013. A dummy execution has also been carried out to test the gallows.
The convicts are all in different cells and being monitored through CCTV, say sources. Arrangements for the hanging are being made in Jail Number 3, where executions take place.

“We received a request letter from the Tihar prison through fax on December 9 (Monday) seeking services of the two hangmen of UP, as they do not have hangman there. The letter makes no mention of the convicts to be hanged but states there may be requirements,” said the director general (DG) of UP prisons administration and reform services, Anand Kumar.
On Monday, prison officers also opened the gate of the “phasi kotha” in jail number 3, the courtyard where the execution will take place. Officers checked the iron beam, the wooden plank, and the lever. The officers then conducted a mock hanging by using sand bags to test the weight on the beam, plank, and lever.

His work actually begins once the date of the execution is announced. A copy of the court order pronouncing the death sentence is handed to the convict and his family. Simultaneously, the hangman is intimated. He is asked to inspect the gallows and prepare for the execution.