Calcutta, Aug. 14: Hours before Dhananjoy Chatterjee was taken to the gallows for Hetal Parekh’s rape and murder, his fellow jailmates were divided over the hanging.

Few had slept the night, knowing a hanging was due in the very jail they were confined. Many had been behind the same bars when Sukumar Burman and Kartick Sil were hanged in August 1991.

“This is the saddest day in our lives. Dhananjoy was friendly with all of us and we cannot think he will no more be among us. Why are you eliminating him? Is it state-sponsored murder?” Sheikh Selim, a 35-year-old convict, asked chief discipline officer P.K. Chowdhury as he was on his rounds around 8.30 pm yesterday.

Chowdhury said Selim, lodged in the jail for nearly a decade, was “very unhappy” and had urged that the death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment.

But Arjun Das (name changed on request), languishing in the jail for nearly 20 years on murder charges, said Dhananjoy was served the “right punishment”.

“I, too, was convicted with murder, but for me it was an act of impulse. I never thought of raping and murdering a teenage girl who had a long life to live. It was a most heinous crime that has to be condemned by everybody,” he said.

Das said the hanging would act as a deterrent for “perverts” and persons prone to “outraging the modesty of women”. He felt the case had snowballed into a controversy only because some groups started lobbying against the hanging.

“Where were those groups when a teenage girl was raped and murdered in March 1990?” he asked.

Swapan, Bhola and Loknath, all life convicts who have been in the jail for several years, echoed him. “Dhananjoy used to tell us he was framed in the case and was not actually involved in the rape and murder of Hetal Parekh. But we could not buy his argument,” one said.

But those serving brief sentences for petty cases plumped for Dhananjoy. “Our intimacy with Dhananjoy had grown for the last few years and he used to tell us all the time he was not involved. We are convinced he could have escaped the gallows had his case been properly dealt with,” one said.

Some warders, particularly those guarding Dhananjoy’s condemned cell round the clock for the past few days, said the death sentence should have been commuted to a life term.

“There are about eight convicts in different central jails charged with rape and murder. But none has been awarded death penalty,” said an elderly warder working in the jail for over 20 years.