PTI chairman Imran Khan needs no introduction, but for some of you, Tara Maseeh probably will.
Tara Maseeh was the man who hanged an elected former prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, on the gallows back in 1979. At that time, student activists of Jamaat-e-Islami used to go about Karachi University chanting the following slogan:
Tara Maseeh aye ga, surkhon ko latkaye ga
[Tara Maseeh will come and hang these liberals/atheists]
The upcoming 'Azadi March' and Imran Khan's Bahawalpur speech preceding it has put this hanging business in the news again.
At a rally in Bahawalpur, Khan famously threatened that if so much as a single bullet was fired at his followers during the Azadi March in August, he will hang the official behind the shooting with his own hands.
In the same speech, Khan put forward four questions to the PML-N government. Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed not only answered the questions but also offered to be hanged off Imran's hands in case the answers were wrong.
I'd say that if nothing else, Imran Khan's threat should have appeased the sizeable pro-death penalty community of Pakistan, who believe that no good can come out of a crime-fighting regiment if every crime isn't punishable by death. The philosophy paints the last government as an abject failure, for in all five years of its tenure, it failed to put a single convicted head into the noose.
I think Bhutto's hanging could be a possible reason for that.
Bhutto's death has been openly called 'judicial murder' for a long time now. Justice Naseem Hasan Shah — one of the judges on the panel which imposed the death sentence on Bhutto — admitted in an interview that there was tremendous political pressure behind the sentence.
Go through:On this day: Bhutto hanged
More recently, in October 1999, when Pervez Musharraf ousted Nawaz Sharif and filed a case against him for hijacking a plane, the general had hoped Sharif and his loyalists would be awarded the death sentence.
But as luck would have it, a Sindhi judge, Justice Rehmat Hussain Jaffri, disappointed him with a life sentence instead. If Jaffri had been a fan of 'hangman' just as Musharraf and Imran Khan are, there's a good likelihood our prime minister wouldn't be here today.
The horror of executing a person
To give you an idea of what havoc the death penalty can wreak on people, here's an example:
In October 1992, one Major Arshad Jameel claimed to have located and killed nine Indian agents (in an encounter following a tip-off) in Tando Bahawal, Hyderabad, Sindh. At that time, the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif happened to be in Hyderabad as well. He admired the Major's feat on national television.
Later, it was discovered that the 'encounter' was fake. Jameel was tried and handed the death sentence by a military court.
But up till 1996, the sentencing could not be carried out.
Eventually, the sisters of the two brothers who lost their lives in this 'encounter' set themselves on fire. Only then, in October 1996, was Arshad Jameel finally hanged.
The law requires that a 'first class' magistrate be present during the execution. In the above case, the magistrate nominated was Ghanor Khan Jatoi.
I happened to be familiar with Jatoi through a couple of friends of mine, who knew him closely. According to them, Ghanor Khan Jatoi was a very sensitive man. He tried hard to break free of the job assigned to him, but was eventually forced to witness a man die in front of his eyes.
After the hanging, Jatoi started to grow restless with every passing day. He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. Things gradually grew worse and he began to have fits. To escape the ghosts of the hanging, he got himself transferred to Sangarh district, but to no improvement in his health. Eventually, Ghanor Khan Jatoi ended this ordeal by committing suicide.
All this not for someone who administered the hanging, but only witnessed it.
Of course, I don't mean to scare Imran Khan away from hanging people, but only wish to point out that having someone hanged requires a certain tenacity that is genetic. M.G. Chitkara writes in his book Benazir: A profile:
"Tara Maseeh, the man who hanged Bhutto, was given Rs25 for the task. He came from a family of executioners and considered the job an honour for him. Maseeh's father was the person who hanged the liberalist freedom-fighter Bhagat Singh."
The money aside, an honour is an honour. These days, there's a shortage of people fit for the job in India too.
Also read:Indian court upholds death sentence for Delhi gang-rapists
Mahadeb Malik, the executioner from Calcutta, says it's no easy task and requires tremendous courage. Think in terms of how you're essentially killing a person per a pre-planned scheme and without any personal reason or even remorse, says Malik. There's zero room for botching it and sometimes, you even have to deal with the wrath of the person being executed.
The BBC report A country in search of a hangman also says that executioners in India are paid Rs10,000 for every execution. According to the 2013 report of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there are as many as 6,218 convicts inside Pakistan's jails waiting to be hanged.
If Pakistan starts paying its executioners Rs10,000 for every hanging, I think the total revenue for killing people could amount to over Rs 6 crore.
Perhaps the government could assign this task to Imran - at the very least, it would serve to fill up the party coffers, if he is up to the task.
Translated by Talha Ahmed from the original in Urdu.