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Pawan Kumar |
Pawan Kumar, who learned his trade from his father and grandfather, is paid £30 a month as a registered executioner
The phone call will come some time in the next few weeks, and when it does Pawan Kumar will be ready.
"I have already done a test run, with a sack of sand the weight of the criminal. I have been waiting for this moment all my life," said the part-time clothes hawker in the northern Indian town of Meerut.
For while selling shirts from the back of a bicycle pays Kumar's rent, his vocation lies elsewhere: the 52-year-old is one of a handful of officially registered professional hangmen in
India.
So far, however, he has never actually carried out an execution.
Last month, he was called to a jail in the city of Jaipur, 250 miles south of Meerut, to execute a condemned prisoner. At the last minute though, the man was reprieved.
In early September, Kumar was scheduled to hang Surinder Koli, one of India's most notorious murderers. But another last-minute decision meant the execution was postponed to allow further legal argument, though just until the end of next month.
"I wouldn't say I was disappointed. That would be a personal thing. I am just sorry that a man who has committed such heinous acts has not died yet," said Kumar.
Source: The Guardian, September 18, 2014