“We have not received any death warrant but have started preparing … Last year in February, the executioner, Pawan Jallad, had inspected the hanging house. He said that there was a problem with the structure of the gallows. We are fixing that now. We have also just ordered two hanging ropes from Bihar’s Buxar central jail,” Mathura senior jail superintendent Shailendra Maitrey told TOI on Wednesday.
Built 150 years ago, the gallows has never been used in independent India. Step-sisters Renuka Shinde and Seema Gavit have been on death row for kidnapping 13 children and killing at least five of them. A woman from Lucknow, Ramshri, had been sentenced to death in 1998 but it was commuted to life imprisonment after she gave birth to a child in prison. So, the hanging house, with creaking structures and covered in overgrowth with decades of disuse, would take a while to set in order should a death warrant be issued.