Nooses from Buxar jail could be used to hang Nirbhaya accused

More than a month before death warrants were issued in the Nirbhaya case on Tuesday, a jail in Bihar had been commissioned to make 10 execution ropes, raising speculations that these could be used for the four accused, who are scheduled to be hanged on January 22. The Buxar jail, the only prison in the state having the required knowhow, had received an instruction to the effect in the first week of December.

However, state government officials could not confirm if the ropes from Buxar will be used for the execution of the accused. The four convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape and murder case will be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail, a Delhi court said on Tuesday.

According to Buxar jail superintendent Vijay Kumar Arora, the ropes "strong but with a short shelf life as these are made of unprocessed cotton", were made available to the prison directorate by the December 14 deadline. "We do not know where these are going to be used. But, the Buxar jail has a long tradition of manufacturing such ropes," he had said.

"It is from this jail that the rope used for executing the death sentence awarded to Parliament attack case accused Afzal Guru was sent. In 2016-17, we had received orders from Patiala jail though we do not know for what specific purpose. It takes about three days to prepare one rope and it involves mainly manual labour with a little use of motorised machinery," he added.

Arora said the last time a rope was supplied from here, it had cost Rs 1,725 "only". The amount would vary time to time mainly on account of the fluctuations in prices of iron and brass, he said.

"These metals are used to make bushes fastened around the rope to ensure that the noose remains firm around the neck and the knot does not come undone, when the weight of a human body is suspended from it," the jail superintendent had said. Asked about the manpower required for the job, he said five to six persons are usually engaged in making one rope.

"Yarns made of 152 strands of thread each are plaited together to come up with a rope of the desired dimensions. Each rope uses up close to 7,000 such strands". The gangrape had taken place inside a moving bus in the national capital on December 16, 2012, and the death of the victim weeks after battling for life at AIIMS, had triggered a nationwide outrage.

The recent sexual assault and murder of a veterinarian in Hyderabad and subsequent killing of the accused in a police encounter, had evoked a fresh clamour including appeals by family members of the Delhi victim - for the execution of the convicts, whose death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court more than a year ago. Incidentally, one of the convicts Akshay Thakur, who worked as a cleaner on the bus hails from Aurangabad district in Bihar..