Bani Kanta Baruah. Telegraph picture

Bani Kanta Baruah, a retired jailor who oversaw two hangings, recounts what he describes as the “rarest of rare” experience in his career:

As I read the news of the President rejecting the clemency plea of a convict this morning, my thoughts went back to the two hangings at Jorhat jail over 20 years ago when I was the jailor.

I am perhaps the only jailor in the state to have supervised execution of two convicts in the same jail within a span of nine months.

The first case was a high-profile one and received wide media attention as the condemned person, Henry W. Roberts, was convicted of murdering a child of a business family of Tinsukia. Henry (in his late forties then) was executed on November 20, 1989, after he lost a long-drawn legal battle and, subsequently, the President rejected his mercy petition.

The next execution was of Kanpai Buragohain (in his mid-thirties then) of Kuwaphala village in Dhemaji district on July 27, 1990.

When the court fixed the date for Henry’s hanging, a great responsibility came upon us. We had to ready the gallows and find a hangman within a very short time (may be a fortnight). Finally, a hangman was brought either from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar... I cannot recollect exactly.

There was a flurry of activities once the date was fixed, as there was a lot of official paper work to be done before the execution. As the hangman reached the jail, we had another big responsibility of looking after his security, as there was always the apprehension that he may be harmed to stop the execution.

The mood in the jail, too, turned grim after the inmates came to know about the impending hanging but the convict with whom I had interacted for about six months remained rather calm.

Henry was a well-mannered person who read a lot of books, newspapers and magazines and had himself drafted the appeals and mercy pleas seeking pardon. During his interactions with me, he had claimed that he had not killed the child deliberately. I think he admitted to kidnapping the boy for money but said he did not want to kill him.

Henry said as the police was tracking him when he was travelling in a vehicle, he had covered the boy’s mouth with his hand to prevent him from raising an alarm. However, the boy died, probably due to suffocation. That was his version. I don’t know whether that was true.

He did not have any last wish nor did anyone from his family ever visit him in jail. Some Christian priests from Jorhat church and a convent school came to meet him and took possession of his body after the hanging.

The night of July 26, 1989 was very crucial for all the jail staff as in the wee hours the next day (July 27) he was to be hanged. All of us were hoping that the process would pass off smoothly. Henry was very cooperative while being taking to the gallows and was insisting that the execution be done as “quickly” as possible. I remember dropping my handkerchief and at the same moment the superintendent raising his right hand, signalling to the hangman to pull the lever to end Henry’s life.

While Henry was calm and composed, Kanpai was a desperate kind of person who kept to himself and had very little interaction with the jail staff. He was brought to the jail less than a month ahead of the hanging. I heard he had killed about six persons, including women and children. One thing I remember is that Kanpai had resisted going to the gallows and had to be dragged to the platform.

I remember being caught in conflicting emotions during the two hangings. There I was, performing a duty entrusted to me by the government. Yet, while the moments before the execution when the convicts were being taken to the gallows were very disconcerting, there would be this thought, too, that after all they had killed human beings and probably deserved the punishment they got. I feel that capital punishment should be meted out in very rare cases.