New Delhi: Days after the Delhi government and the centre rejected a mercy petition filed by one of the four convicts on death row in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, an official in Delhi's Tihar Jail has said they are looking for a hangman.
"We don't have a hangman. We will get one from some other state when needed," news agency ANI quoted an unnamed Tihar Jail official as saying.
Ravi Kumar, an activist from Shimla, has written to President Ram Nath Kovind to appoint him as the temporary executioner in Tihar Jail to hang the convicts, news agency IANS reported on December 5.
"Appoint me as executioner so that Nirbhaya case convicts can be hanged soon and her soul rests in peace," Mr Kumar, 40, a matriculate who sells vegetables, said in the handwritten letter in Hindi.
Vinay Sharma, one of the convicts facing the death penalty for the gang-rape and murder of the 23-year-old paramedic student in Delhi, had filed a mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind.
The Delhi government has "strongly recommended" to reject the mercy petition.
"This is the most heinous crime of extreme brutality committed by the applicant (Vinay Sharma). This is the case where exemplary punishment should be given to deter others from committing such atrocious crimes," Delhi Home Minister Satyendar Jain said last week.
The file was forwarded to Lieutenant Governor, who sent it to the Home Ministry. The Home Ministry then sent it back to the President, in agreement with the recommendations of the Delhi government.
The paramedic student was raped on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012, inside a running bus in south Delhi by six people and severely assaulted before being thrown out on the road.
She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore, where she was admitted after being airlifted from Delhi for treatment.
One of the accused Ram Singh hanged himself in the jail and another convict, a juvenile, was given the maximum sentence of three years' imprisonment in a reform facility.
The fourth death row convict, Akshay Kumar Singh, 33, has not filed a review plea in the top court.