Kasab gets death, but where is the hangman?

Mumbai: Pakistani gunman Ajmal Kasab may have been sent to gallows but where is the hangman?

This question popped up today after 22-year-old Kasab was ordered by a Mumbai trial court to be hanged by the neck until death since not a single hangman is on jail rolls.

Maharashtra, whose capital Mumbai suffered the country's worst terror attack in 2008, does not have a hangman.

The story is the same be it in the national capital's Tihar jail where the last hanging was carried out in 1989 or in West Bengal which executed a capital punishment in 2004.

"We had always borrowed hangman from other prisons.

Anyone who volunteers for the job can do it. Even if there is no hangman to be found, any police officer from the rank of a constable can also do it if he volunteers," a Tihar Jail official said.

Maharashtra's last hangman R Jadhav retired in 1996 and since then there has been no takers for the job, a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity.

"Although there is no hangman in the state to hang a convict, the execution of the sentence would be completed in keeping with the court order. As per the prison manual, it is the duty of the jail superintendent to execute the death sentence and he/she would have to make arrangements for this purpose," the officer said.

Presently, a death sentence is executed at Yerwada in Pune and Central jail in Nagpur.

Jadhav was with the jail administration for over three decades. Before his retirement in 1996, he had hanged Sudhakar Joshi, who was convicted for robbery-cum-triple murder.