Hanging becomes family business in India

Usually, India would not need one, given the rarity of executions. The last was in 2004. But in May, India's president unexpectedly rejected a last-chance mercy petition from a convicted murderer in the Himalayan state of Assam. Prison officials, compelled to act, issued a call for a hangman.

However, the nation's handful of known hangmen had either died, retired or disappeared. The situation was not too surprising, given the ambivalence within the Indian criminal justice system about executions.

In Assam - where the last execution was in 1990 - prison officials made calls to colleagues in the states of West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. West Bengal was home to Nata Mullick, who had conducted the country's last hanging at the age of 87. But he died two years ago, so Assamese officials turned to Uttar Pradesh.

"They promised to send someone," said S Thakuria, Assam's leading prison official. In Uttar Pradesh, the logical place to look was in the city of Meerut, the home of a family known for executions. Kalu Kumar, himself the nephew of a hangman, had achieved national fame in 1989 by hanging one of the two assassins of Indira Gandhi, the former prime minister. He died several years ago but passed the trade to his son, Mammu Singh, who claimed to have performed 11 hangings.

Mr Singh would have been eligible for the Assam job, but he died on 19 May. Officials called the state's only other hangman, in the city of Lucknow, but he had broken his arm and was not accepting work. Then Mammu Singh's eldest son, Pawan Kumar, decided to enter the family business.

Ten days after his father's death, Mr Kumar applied for government certification as a hangman.

"I just want to continue the family legacy," said Mr Kumar. "I'm the fourth generation. You don't see many volunteers coming forward. I'm serving my country."

The pay is not very good for hangmen, partly because of the paucity of hangings, but also because the job is considered contract work. Still, Mr Kumar works selling clothes from the back of his bicycle, and he welcomed the possibility of a 45 monthly retainer for being a hangman.

The workload could increase. India has put to death at least 50 convicts since becoming an independent nation in 1947. The trends suggest that the number of people convicted on capital charges could rise.Nationally, India had 345 people under sentence of death by the end of 2008, according to national crime statistics.

In Meerut, officials told Mr Kumar, the aspiring hangman, that they would speed his application, given the situation in Assam. However, India is known for its bureaucratic delays.

As Mr Kumar waited, the defence lawyer for the condemned man in Assam did not. He filed an emergency motion with the courts. As court cases have been known to linger without judgments for years, or even decades, Indian defence lawyers long ago introduced the argument that forcing someone accused or even convicted of a capital crime to wait for years before an execution amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Indian courts have agreed. In the Assam case, the condemned man, Mahendra Nath Das, had been convicted in 1997, with the verdict upheld by the supreme court a year later. His lawyers lodged their first mercy petition in 1999, which remained pending during the tenure of three different Indian presidents before being rejected last month.

"The man was given capital punishment but not 14 years of imprisonment," argued his lawyer, Arup Chandra Borbora. "For the last 12 years, you are virtually killing him every day."

Mr Kumar, meanwhile, has been invited for an interview with prison officials this month.

For now, India may not need a hangman after all.