2004: Dhananjoy Chatterjee, the last hanged in India … for now
August 14th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 2004,Dhananjoy Chatterjee hanged at Calcutta’s Alipore Central Jail for the 1990 rape-murder of 14-year-old Hetal Parekh.
Chatterjee’s hanging also brought into the limelight the garrulous, publicity-hounding 84-year-old executioner Nata Mallick, who conducted the hanging with his son and grandson and told anyone with a microphone stories of the hangman’s glory days.
Those days are long past on the subcontinent.
Among death penalty countries, India is the anti-Singapore: despite its billion-plus population, death sentences are vanishingly rare. Chatterjee is not only the most recent person hanged in India as of this writing, but the only one hanged there since 1995.
One actual hanging in fourteen years for a billion-person country? The only lower execution rate would be actual abolition.
Chatterjee may be relieved of his milestone distinctions in the not-too-distant future, however. (Where “not-too-distant” by the standards of the Indian death penalty might still mean years away.)
Mohammad Afzal, condemned for the 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, has become a political lightning rod; India’s conservative Hindu party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made political hay pushing for Afzal’s execution.
Also On This Date
- 1949: Husni al-Za'im, Syrian president
- 1860: John Moyse, the Private of the Buffs
- 1936: Rainey Bethea, America's last public hanging
Possibly Related Executions
- 1962: Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin
- 2002: Sani Yakubu
- 2005: Michael Ross, the Roadside Strangler
- 2007: Majid and Hossein Kavousifar
- 2009: Minurul Islam and two friends, for a dowry death
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,India,Milestones,Murder,Rape,Ripped from the Headlines
Tags: 2000s, 2004, alipore central jail, august 14, bjp, calcutta, dhananjoy chatterjee, famous executioners, hetal parekh, mohammad afzal, nata mallick
August 14th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Weren’t the people that perpetrated the shootings in Mumbai last year sentenced to hang?
December 14th, 2009 at 9:09 am
[...] 10. Dhananjoy Chatterjee, 2004 [...]
February 19th, 2010 at 6:33 am
HANG MOHAMMAD AJMAL AMIR KASAB AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. PLEASE.
October 31st, 2010 at 10:35 am
[...] 37. May 10, 1994: John Wayne Gacy – Democratic machine operative, amateur harlequin, serial killer 38. Aug. 14, 2004: Dhananjoy Chatterjee – The only person hanged in India in the past generation … though he doesn’t seem [...]
May 23rd, 2011 at 6:33 am
Dhanjoy chattarjee has no political background and there is no any community activicst came for support, So, his excution was took place.We are not to forget that, Mazod azzar to whom we released on khandhar. All the hanging let go on pending but why it for Afzal Guru and Kasab .
Our democrasy can answer it ?