Death convict requests execution, announces donation of body parts

14 March, 2012

Punjab prepares to carry out an execution after a gap of 24 years as Balwant Singh; the assassin of..

BEANT SINGH, the Chief Minister of Punjab between 1992- 95 was assassinated on August 31, 1995 by Balwant Singh Rajoana. The convict had requested the court to choose a date for his execution, hence he would be executed at 9 am in Patiala Central Jail on March 31, reports Hindustan Times. Lately, we haven’t heard of the capital punishments carried out in India.

Balwant Singh seems to be extremely guilty of his crime and has already announced that he would be donating parts of his body. With this, he may not be able to compensate Beant Singh’s family, but, he would surely be able to help some people with his donations. The countdown for the convict, who was a resident of Raikot, Ludhiana has already started, with only 17 days left for him to breathe.

With this execution, there are two strange things that have come to the fore. It is very rare when a convict himself asks for a date of his execution. The other strange point is that the state where the execution is going to take place, Punjab, presently does not have any hangman. This purely reflects that there are not many cases, where execution dates are set.

The last time a person was executed in Punjab was 24 years back and the last person to be executed in the whole country was in 2004 when a rapist walked the gallows at Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata (then Calcutta).

The debate for execution of criminals is never going to end in India. People say that India should use this form of punishment so as to reduce crime rate that is increasing with every passing day. Should India also follow the footsteps of countries such as China, Iran, N. Korea, USA etc, where execution is used a regular punishment. So huge is the number of executions that China hosts a hit TV programme that features death convicts.