Calcutta, June 18: Alipore Central jail is getting ready for June 25, when Dhananjoy Chatterjee, caretaker-cum-liftman of a highrise in south Calcutta, will be hanged for raping and murdering 15-year-old Hetal Parekh 14 years ago.
Current students, teachers and Hetal Parekh’s classmates of Welland Gouldsmith School — the girl’s alma mater, where she had studied from nursery till her death in Class X — as well as the head of the institution and the non-teaching staff are fighting for a common cause — “no more mercy” for killer Dhananjoy.
They have formed a pressure group to ensure that the government does not defer Dhananjoy’s execution at the last minute, bowing to pleas from rights lobbies. In a letter to Governor Viren J. Shah yesterday, signed by principal Gillian D’Costa Hart as well as half-a-dozen teachers of the school, Shah was requested not to yield to last-minute pressure and grant pardon to Dhananjoy on any ground whatsoever.
“Who was there to plead for Hetal Parekh when she was being raped and murdered?” Hart and her students asked. “It is our earnest appeal to Your Excellency to please see that justice is meted out to Dhananjoy Chatterjee and that he gets his due punishment on June 25,” the letter added.
Many of Hetal’s classmates and a number of teachers who taught her for several years, are campaigning against the human rights lobbies, as they say they still have not forgotten the fearful sight of the lifeless body.
“She was mercilessly pulled by her hair... we saw tufts of hair plucked off her head. There were bruises all over her body and her wrists were broken, which indicated that she fought till the end to free herself. No one could have been more cruel. We want to see him (Dhananjoy) hanged. He has already had 14 years’ time and no more mercy should be granted to him,” her classmates said.
Though they were aware that as of now, the death sentence order is final, what has caused concern is a recent report that a city-based human rights lobby is pressuring the government to defer the execution.
