Buxar’s rope trick that hangs

Darpan Singh
Buxar/Patna,
September 28
WITH THE Special Pota court fixing October 20 next for the hanging of Jaish-e-Mohammed militant, Mohammad Afzal, the main accused in the December 13, 2001, Parliament attack case who was one of those convicted, one vital question doing the rounds at the Buxar Central Jail is: Will it (the jail) again play ‘a role’ in yet another convict’s hanging in the country? According to the authorities of Buxar Central Jail, its inmates have for long been ‘doing their bit to facilitate’ hangings at different prisons across the country. Buxar Central Jail is probably the only place in the country where the special Manilla rope is made. The rope, which is used in all hangings in the country, is made by the prisoners of the Buxar Central Jail at a factory unit set up on the jail premises itself!More pertinently, prisoners engaged in making the Manilla rope are apparently not aware of the fact that it would be used to hang prisoners on death row. The then Deputy Superintendent and technical head of the jail factory, Rajesh, had told the HT sometime back, “We do not tell them what the Manilla ropes are made for as that might cause unrest in the prison.” Though 300-odd prisoners work at the jail factory which produces several other items, only six or seven prisoners are engaged in making the ropes. If the claim of some sources at the jail were reliable, the Manilla rope made here is sent to all those prisons across the country where a hanging is to take place. The ropes are said to cost Rs 180 per kg and are sent only when they are needed for executions. Incidentally, nearly one dozen convicts, sentenced to death by various lower courts, are waiting on death row with their appeals pending in higher courts of the country. Though the present Jail Superintendent could not be contacted despite much effort, one of his predecessors in office, Jaishankar Prasad, confirmed that the Manilla rope was indeed manufactured at Buxar Central Jail. Explaining the manufacturing process, he said, “The yarn is first spun into thick thread from what is known as the ‘ J-34 variety’ of cotton. The thread is later made extremely smooth and soft by wax. Extra care is taken to make sure that there are no knots in the thread strands. The rope itself is finally produced by entwining 20 strands of ‘6/16 count’ with the breaking strength of 168 pounds.” He further said that, in all, three kinds of rope — hanging rope, handcuff rope and tent rope — were produced at the rope manufacturing unit of the jail factory.There was no official word on the possibility of Afzal also being hanged by a rope acquired from Buxar Central Jail, i.e., if he is hanged at all. There was also no official record suggesting that Dhananjoy Chatterjee, the Kolkata youth who had raped and killed a child, was the 55th convict since Independence, to be hanged by a Manilla rope made at the Buxar Central Jail. However, a jail official said on condition of anonymity that though “the jail had made no supplies of the rope to the West Bengal Government in the recent past, he (Dhananjoy Chatterjee) appears to have been executed by being hung from the rope sent by us about seven years back.”According to jail records, one of the recent supplies of the hanging rope was made to the Andhra Pradesh Government in 2003. A consignment of the rope was also sent to the Bhagalpur Central Jail in 1995. More recently, in 2004, a sample of the Manilla rope was sent to the then IG (Prisons), Bihar, who apparently wanted to inspect it “for quality”.