Even as options are running out for the Nirbhaya convicts to evade death sentence, Delhi’s Tihar jail, where the four men are lodged, do not have an executioner.
According to a report in ANI, a Tihar jail official has said that they do not have a hangman and will have to get one from some other state.
Earlier, media reports quoting Delhi Jail Director General Sandeep Goyal said there was no authorised trained executioner in Tihar Jail or Mandoli Jail who can perform the duty of a hangman.
Nirbhaya case convicts have been sentenced to death right from the lower court to the Supreme Court, but till date, a court order has not been issued for the same.
Meanwhile, Dalit activist Ravi Kumar belonging to Himachal Pradesh has written to President Ram Nath Kovind to appoint him as a temporary executioner in Tihar Jail to hang the convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape case.
“Appoint me as executioner so that Nirbhaya case convicts can be hanged soon and her soul rests in peace,” Kumar, 40, a matriculate who sells vegetables in Sanjauli area, mentioned in a handwritten letter in Hindi.
A head constable in Tamil Nadu’s Ramanathapuram district has also come forward to hang convicts who have been sentenced to death and are awaiting execution in Tihar jail.
Head constable Subash Srinivas offered to do the executioner’s job after learning that the Tihar prison did not have a hangman.
The execution of the Nirbhaya convicts could now happen any time as the Centre, Delhi government and the 2012 gangrape and murder victim’s parents have moved the President’s office seeking rejection of the mercy petition filed by one of the men, Vinay Sharma.
A 23-year-old woman was brutally gangraped and tortured on December 16, 2012 in a moving bus which led to her death. All the six accused were arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder. One of the accused was a minor and appeared before a juvenile justice court, while another accused committed suicide in Tihar Jail. Four of the convicts were sentenced to death by a trial court in September 2013, and the verdict was confirmed by the Delhi High Court in March 2014 and upheld by the Supreme Court in May 2017, which also dismissed their review petition in July 2018.