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CALCUTTA, India - A man convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl was hanged at dawn today in this Indian city, the first execution in nine years in a country where the death penalty is reserved for "the rarest of rare cases."
Dhananjaya Chatterjee, 39, was executed at 4:30 a.m. He walked out of Cell No. 3 at the Alipora Correctional Home, where he has spent the last 13 years in solitary confinement, and walked down a concrete path to the wooden gallows.
An 84-year-old hangman, helped by his son and grandson, was brought out of retirement to carry out the execution.
Dhananjay Chatterjee, had been on death row since his 1991 conviction for raping and smothering 14-year-old Hetal Parekh, who lived in the apartment building where he worked as a security guard.
Chatterjee, 39, maintained his innocence and lawyers appealed twice to the Supreme Court and sought clemency from two Indian presidents. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam turned down the final clemency plea last week and the Supreme Court rejected another appeal Thursday, saying it was without merit, exhausting Chatterjee's final appeal.
Execution is rare in India, though several convicts have been sentenced to death in the past decade. India's last execution was in 1995, when an auto-rickshaw driver convicted in the serial murders of prostitutes was hanged in southern Tamil Nadu state.
Hangman Nata Mullick performed the last hanging in West Bengal state on Aug. 21, 1991. That execution took place in another Calcutta jail and no one at the Alipora prison remembers the last time its gallows were used.
"Criminals like Chatterjee ought to be hanged so that others don't commit such crimes," Mullick said, running his fingers through his shiny silver hair. "I'm only making society safer."
Chatterjee's conviction was based on circumstantial evidence. He fled and the victim's watch was found in his native village. Witnesses testified they saw him on the day of the murder go up to the apartment where Hetal lived. No DNA testing was available in India in 1991, but when it became possible later to do such tests, courts rejected the petition of Chatterjee's lawyers.
"The president has been unfair and unjust in rejecting my son's appeal," Chatterjee's 78-year-old father, Banshidhar Chatterjee, told reporters.
The case has raised objections from human rights groups and intellectuals in West Bengal state. The European Union asked India on June 23 to abolish capital punishment.
On Friday, 30 members of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights marched silently in front of Alipora, waving signs reading "Abolish capital punishment" and "Death for death is state-sponsored terrorism."