2 to be hanged for Hoshiarpur boy’s murder

Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Patiala, October 1

Punjab’s Department of Prisons will execute the death penalty awarded to Vikram Singh Walia and Jasvir Singh for the kidnap and murder of Hoshiarpur boy Abhi Verma. Their plea for a lighter sentence was turned down by the President’s office on September 27. 

Along with a woman accomplice, the two had kidnapped Abhi, a goldsmith’s son, for ransom in February 2005 and had later killed him.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

“This is to authorise and require to carry the said sentence into execution causing the said …to be hanged by neck until he be dead on 25th day of October 2016 at 9 am in your jail…with an endorsement certifying that the sentence has been executed,” reads an order issued by the District and Sessions court, Hoshiarpur.

The department now has to arrange for a hangman. It has none on its rolls. There have been no hangings in Punjab after June 16, 1989, when hangman Kaloo was called from the Tihar Jail to execute brothers Gurcharan Singh and Pritam Singh of Sangrur.

As per the Punjab Jail Manual, 1896, in the absence of an official hangman, the jail authorities can get a hangman from another jail or else the Deputy Jail Superintendent has to perform the task.