1868: Thomas Wells, the first private hanging in England 1986: The Stoning of Soraya M

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

Possibly Related Executions

Entry Filed under: 21st Century, Capital Punishment, Common Criminals, Crime, Death Penalty, Execution, Hanged, India, Milestones, Murder, Rape, Ripped from the Headlines

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Steve  |  August 14th, 2009 at 10:27 am

    Weren’t the people that perpetrated the shootings in Mumbai last year sentenced to hang?

  • 2. ExecutedToday.com »&hellip  |  December 14th, 2009 at 9:09 am

    [...] 10. Dhananjoy Chatterjee, 2004 [...]

  • 3. Jayaram  |  February 19th, 2010 at 6:33 am

    HANG MOHAMMAD AJMAL AMIR KASAB AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. PLEASE.

Leave a Comment

Required

Required, hidden

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed


Calendar

Archives

Categories


blog advertising is good for you

Recently Commented

  • Jason Nelson: In response to Topileus question: - I dont...
  • Fiz: I totally agree, Monica. I doubt any of the...
  • Fiz: Which one of them , Jacques De Molay or Geoffrey de...
  • Riyad: lol.. this website title and background picture...
  • Monica: Thanks for that, Richard! Yes, on the article...

Accolades