West Bengal's ruling leftists are divided on capital punishment as a deterrent to crime even as uncertainty lingers about the first hanging in the state in 13 years.
While some top Left leaders, including Marxist icon Jyoti Basu, feel a death sentence would not serve its purpose, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has made it clear that the government supports the death verdict against Dhananjoy Chatterjee.
Chatterjee was held guilty of raping and killing a 14-year-old schoolgirl March 5, 1990, in Kolkata.
He fought his case up to the Supreme Court that upheld the lower courts' death verdict against him.
His plea for clemency was earlier turned down by the president, but on Thursday, just a day before he was to be hanged, his execution was stayed for two days.
The reprieve came because President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had forwarded a mercy petition to the federal home ministry, seeking its opinion on the matter.
The Supreme Court, which had stayed the execution for two days to hear an appeal from Chatterjee's relatives, on Friday refused to entertain it and left it to the president to decide.
It wasn't known who had moved the latest petition before President Kalam that he sent to the federal home ministry for an opinion. The president usually goes by the advice of the ministry on clemency pleas.
{{/usCountry}}It wasn't known who had moved the latest petition before President Kalam that he sent to the federal home ministry for an opinion. The president usually goes by the advice of the ministry on clemency pleas.
{{/usCountry}}The execution drama has hooked the media in West Bengal and has sparked a debate about the utility of capital punishment.
"Personally, I'm against capital punishment. But Chatterjee's crime should be met with exemplary punishment," Basu, the former state chief minister, said.
Anil Biswas, Basu's colleague from his Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) that heads the state's ruling coalition, is also against death sentences.
Biswas described capital punishment as a medieval practice, but said the question of doing away with it was subject to debate.
Chief Minister Bhattacharya said the government was in favour of awarding death to Chatterjee for his gruesome crime. The chief minister's view was echoed by a section of society.
The school where the victim, Hetal Parekh, studied held a special prayer for her.
"The stay order (on the hanging) is shocking. When Hetal was crying for mercy, did anybody hear her? We thought she would get justice," said Gillian Rosemary Hart, principal of Welland Gouldsmith School.
But there are strong and well-known voices against capital punishment as well.
A body of eminent Bengali intellectuals and a rights group campaigning for the abolition of capital punishment had written to Kalam asking him to remit Chatterjee's sentence.
Famous Bengalis like writer Sunil Ganguly, author and Magsaysay award winner Mahesweta Devi, filmmaker Mrinal Sen, actress-director Aparna Sen and many others have spoken against it.
Despite a longstanding debate, the Government of India has never considered withdrawing capital punishment, but has begun considering a more 'humane' method of execution such as lethal injection.
Several prominent Indians such as socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, then Supreme Court judge V R Krishna Iyer and politician Acharya J.B. Kriplani were signatory to a 1977 convention in Stockholm against capital punishment.