SECTION 354(5) CR.P.C. mandates that when a convicted person is sentenced to death, he be hanged by the neck till he is dead.
In addition there are the old and technical prison manuals which laid down the mode of execution of a sentence of a person condemned to death. The prison manual requires that a manila rope, one inch in diameter shall be used for executions. The scale of drop of the body been proportioned to the weight of the culprit ranging from 5 feet to 7 feet, depending upon the discretion of the jail superintendent. It has further been laid down that the hands of the convict would be pinioned behind his back; his legs would be strapped tightly and his head covered with a cap and his body to remain suspended for half an hour.
Is it not important that even a person convicted of a heinous crime should be given a dignified manner of death and dignified burial. Is the hanging of a person in today’s modern time not barbaric and an obsolete method of execution. In the United Kingdom from where we have borrowed most of our judicial precepts, the mode of execution by hanging has been done away with since it was found to be obsolete and barbaric.
