Three men offer to hang Kasab

PATNA/SHIMLA - Three men have offered to do service as hangman to execute Pakistani jehadi Ajmal Kasab, sentenced to death by a special court in the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case.

Saroj Kumar and Arvind alias Doman, middle-aged men from Bihar’s Samastipur district, last week separately wrote letters to President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Maharashtra government to allow them to hang Kasab.

Thirty six-year-old Gindo Ram, a resident of remote Salooni village in Himachal Pradesh’s Chamba district, said he too wrote a letter last week to the president offering his services to hang Kasab.

Kumar and Doman told IANS they have requested for the “life-time opportunity” to hang the lone surviving terrorist caught during the 60-hour Mumbai mayhem in which 166 people were killed.

Ram, employed as a driver with a private company, said: “I cannot fulfil my dream of joining the armed forces. Now my only wish is to do something for the country by hanging Kasab.”

The three men read in the newspapers that there was no hangman to execute Kasab and, hence, offered to become one.

Saroj and Doman — who are from Patori block in Samastipur — said the last official hangman of India, late Nata Mullick, also was originally from Patori area.

In August 2004, Mullick carried out the hanging of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, convicted of rape and murder of a schoolgirl in Kolkata.

“I will try to give a new lease of life to the Patori legacy to work as a hangman by hanging Kasab,” Doman said.