Bhopal: Soon after the Satna district court ordered death sentence to the teacher who brutally raped a four-year-old and scheduled his execution for March 2, the Jabalpur Central Jail is looking for a hangman to carry out the execution. There are none in the state, as well.It is not clear as to who would hang him at the gallows in Jabalpur Central Jail at 5.00 am on March 2 as mandated by the court. Though death penalty, particularly in cases of child rape or child rape/ murder cases is becoming commonplace in Madhya Pradesh following a new law enacted in April 2018 providing for capital punishment for rape of a minor less than 12 years of age, there is no hangman in the state to carry out the capital punishment at Jabalpur Central Jail, the only jail in the state where execution can take place.Trial courts in the year 2018 sent 21 convicts of sexual assault and murder cases to the gallows. There is a drastic change in the scenario in the state where the last execution took place at Jabalpur Central Jail in 1996.At that time, too a hangman was brought from Uttar Pradesh to execute the death sentence.When director general (prisons), Sanjay Chaudhary, was asked whether MP would now recruit hangmen in the wake of more death penalties being handed out to a number of convicts, he said, “There never was a sanctioned post of hangman (Jallad) in the past nor now.”He further said, anonymous persons, often from other states, are called for execution of death penalty in the state as and when required. “When a convict was awarded death sentence and was to be executed at Indore Central Jail in 1974-75, I remember, the hangman had come from Maharashtra,” he said. Sources at Jabalpur Central Jail, where last execution took, said that on both the occasions, hangmen were called from Uttar Pradesh. “In 1995, a father and son were hanged for murder and in 1996, one Kanta Prasad was executed again for murder. In both the occasions, hangmen had come from UP,” said an official at Jabalpur Central Jail on condition of anonymity.It was again at the Central Jail, Jabalpur, where arrangements had been made for execution of Maganlal Barela, on August 8, 2013 and again a hangman was called from UP. But Supreme Court had stayed the execution at the last minute after the then Chief Justice of India listened to arguments of Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties counsel Colin Gonsalves at his residence after mid-night on August 7.

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