Paintings, prayers and a final restless night: What four convicts did till 5:30 am

Till 2.30am Friday, the four convicts sat hearing realtime updates of their cases from the prison guards.

Hours before he was due to be hanged to death at 5.30am Friday with three other convicts in the December 16 gang rape and murder case, Vinay Sharma sat painting two images of a Hindu god in his cell in jail number 3, some 100 yards from the hanging courtyard. They were gifts, one for his mother and one for the jail superintendent.

Police personnel seen as an ablulance leaves after four convicts in the December 2012 gang rape case were hanged at 5:30am in Tihar jail, at Tihar Village in New Delhi. (Photo by Biplov Bhuyan/ Hindustan Times)

As the clock ticked and their lawyers ran from one court to another hoping to get the death sentence delayed, or commuted, the four convicts—Sharma (26), Pawan Gupta (25), Mukesh Singh (32) and Akshay Thakur (31)—did not sleep a wink, said jail officers.

The additional inspector general and the deputy inspector general, no.2 and no.3 in the jail hierarchy, were also running from the high court to the Supreme Court to attend hearings related to the execution. Only the prison chief, director general Sandeep Goel, stayed inside Tihar Jail. Officers said this was the first time that such hearings were ongoing till hours before the execution was due to be held.

The preparations were complete by Thursday evening and though the hangman had been called from Uttar Pradesh 48 hours in advance, it wasn’t until 2.30am Friday did he know if he’d pull the lever.

Around the same time, as Sharma finished his paintings, Gupta, Singh and Thakur were restless inside their separate cells; they were getting real time updates about their case from the prison guards.

“Before being taken from the cell where they were lodged, Sharma handed his paintings to the jail superintendent. He had painted them Thursday night. He gifted one to the jail superintendent and asked the other one be sent to his mother. He also gave a Hanuman Chalisa for his mother,” said a prison officer.

“Only Mukesh’s family came to meet him Thursday; he was cheerful. By Thursday afternoon, the lower court had refused to stay the hangings, but maybe they knew that their counsel would approach the higher courts till late at night. The jail officers were giving them real time information,” the officer said.

Till Thursday evening, the four had believed the hanging would be stalled, prison officers said.

A second prison officer, who did not wish to be named, said that at around 4.30am, the prison doctor told them that the process of their execution had begun and started the process of examining the convicts. At around 5 they were told to walk to the gallows.

“Before leaving for the gallows, only Vinay opted to take a bath. Initially, he cried and argued with the guards, but he did not resist. He prayed before leaving his cell. Pawan, too, shouted at the guards but he did not lose his composure. We thought the four men would protest or refuse to abide by court’s order, but by the time they came to the phansi kotha (hanging courtyard), it seemed they had accepted their fate,” the officer said.