June 25
INDIA:
Killer-rapist wins stay on hanging
In Calcutta, a man due to be hanged yesterday for raping and killing a
teenage girl in east India has won a last-minute stay of execution after
his family moved a plea for clemency, an official said.
"The hanging of Dhananjoy Chatterjee has been postponed," West Bengal
state law minister Nisith Adhikari said. "It is not going to happen
tomorrow." Chatterjee, a former apartment guard and elevator operator, was
due to be executed early Friday at a prison in Calcutta, capital of West
Bengal.
He was convicted of raping and killing a 16-year-old tenant as she
returned from school in 1990.
West Bengal advocate-general Balai Roy said President Abdul Kalam had
received an application for clemency, thereby staying the hanging.
"The president is considering this application for clemency," Roy said,
according to the Press Trust of India.
He said the state had been asked to stay the execution of the prisoner
until the president finally decides on the application.
The ageing parents of the convict, Bangshidhar and Purnima Chatterjee, had
threatened to commit suicide if their son was hanged.
They had earlier asked the authorities to delay the execution until they
had died of natural causes.
They along with 30 other relatives also demonstrated in front of governor
Viren J. Shah's house in Calcutta on Monday, calling for a repeal of the
death sentence.
Capital punishment is increasingly out of favour in India, whose Supreme
Court authorises executions only in the "rarest of rare cases."
Executions are regularly delayed or commuted at the last minute by India's
president.
The federal government keeps no records on the death penalty, but the last
known executions were in January 1989 with the hangings of Satwant Singh
and Kehar Singh, the bodyguards of prime minister Indira Gandhi who were
convicted of assassinating her.
(source: Agence France-Presse)
