Rs500 for every execution: Punjab's hangman tells his tale

Sabir Masih, one of two executioners in Punjab, says he has hanged more than 200 convicts since 2007

With over 5,000 death row convicts in Punjab awaiting their fate, there are only two hangmen in the province.

Despite the demand, all that these hangmen make is Rs500 per execution.

Over 180 people have been hanged in the country since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on death penalty following the Taliban’s heinous terrorist attack on Army Public School in Peshawar.

With most of these hangings were carried out in Punjab (around 170), there are only two hangmen for carrying out executions in the 36 jails across the province.

Read: To be hanged till death: Gallows swept clean, ropes bought for executions

Sabir Masih, one of two government employees executing death penalties in Punjab, told BBC Urdu that often he travels hundreds of miles to perform his duties for which he is paid a mere Rs500.

Lamenting the fact that some jail officials neither pay him his fee nor give him any travelling allowance, Sabir says sometimes he has to pay travel and other expenses from his own pocket.

Claiming that he has executed more than 200 men in his career, Sabir said since December last year, he has hanged around 60 convicts in half a dozen jails across Punjab.

Read: Five murder convicts hanged in jails across Punjab

Among those he has hanged was Dr Usman, who was found guilty of attacking the convoy of former president General Pervez Musharraf and the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi.

Sabir, who makes Rs15,000 per month, reveals even his forefathers were associated with the profession and his grandfather worked as a hangman during the British era and would get Rs20 for it.

His grandfather’s brother, Tara Masih, is the perhaps the most well-known from his family. Tara is the one who hanged Pakistan's first elected prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979.

Tara had to be flown from Bahawalpur to Lahore for the hanging after the executioner in Lahore, Sadiq Masih, Tara's nephew and Sabir's father, excused himself from hanging the popular leader.

The article originally appeared on BBC Urdu