Death a life odyssey for 83-year-old hangman

He has hanged people for 65 years but is itching to tie a noose around just one more convict's neck. Then, Nata Mallick says, his life as Kolkata's hangman will be complete -- and his grandson will take over.

He has hanged people for 65 years but is itching to tie a noose around just one more convict's neck. Then, Nata Mallick says, his life as Kolkata's hangman will be complete -- and his grandson will take over.

On Friday, the 83-year-old is scheduled to hang his last convict, a rapist and murderer, who would be the first person executed in India since 1989, although he still has a chance for a reprieve.

Having last tended to the gallows in the 1980s, Mallick is worried he has lost his knack -- just as he is teaching the trade to his 20-year-old grandson and successor, Prabhat, who is set to assist him with Friday's execution.

For more than a week, grandfather and grandson have been tying nooses with red-and-white towels next to the wooden cot and broken chair in Mallick's humble home in an alley near Kolkata's biggest golf club.

"I need to rehearse for the execution to get mentally prepared and make sure I perform my job perfectly," said the stocky Mallick, pushing back his disheveled grey hair.

Mallick has executed 24 people in his long career and has no regrets. Such is his passion for his work that he has starred as a hangman in Bengali-language films.

He sees himself as just one in a line of hangmen including his father, Shiv Lal Mallick, who he said executed 600 people including Kudiram Bose and Surya Sen. They were sentenced to death for attacks against British colonial rulers.

"Hanging is in our blood," Mallick said.

The current hangman now calls Bose and Sen "freedom fighters". But he has no sympathy for the man he is set to kill Friday, Dhananjoy Chatterjee, an apartment guard and elevator operator convicted of raping and killing a 16-year-old tenant as she returned from school in 1990.

"Can you imagine a security guard of any building raping and murdering?" Mallick said. "I will hang a devil, not a human being."

But while Mallick is looking forward to the job with his grandson, the man set to be executed also has relatives -- and they want the hanging delayed.

Bangshidhar Chatterjee, 76, has appealed for the state to wait until he and his 70-year-old wife die before executing their son.

Bangshidhar Chatterjee said that while he realises his son has done wrong, he and his wife are unlikely to live much longer.

"My son has been imprisoned for the last 14 years. Can't the courts wait for a few more years before hanging him?" Chatterjee asked.

While Mallick sees his work in moral terms, there is also a financial incentive. Mallick is paid by the job and said the government has just agreed to double his salary to 10,000 rupees (220 dollars) per execution.

Even though Friday's execution would provide Mallick with his first pay cheque in years, he said he was ready to stand down now that his grandson was following in his footsteps. His son declined to be a hangman.

He said that as he puts the noose around a convict's neck, he folds his hands in a traditional sign of mercy and says, "I am carrying out the order of the government. Please forgive me for my deed."

Not so on Friday. "My inner voice forbids me to do so as he has committed the most heinous crime," he said.

"I will be happy to hang the man. It will be my last assignment and then I will go on a pilgrimage."