FINAL EXECUTION

By Desaraju Surya
I stayed in a town called Rajahmundry for four days to cover the 12-day river Godavari Pushkarams in 2003. As a reporter, apart from covering the routine things related to the Pushkarams, I was on the lookout for "off-beat" stories and this has led me to the Central Prison on the outskirts of the town.
Upon meeting the jail superintendent for primary information about the jail and also to seek permission to go around the open prison, I set upon my news hunt. I interacted with some convicts in the open prison, who were busy doing many things, including agriculture and animal husbandry. Some of the convicts, serving life term, had become "criminals" by sheer circumstances. Finishing the interaction with such persons, I then went to the 'execution chamber' where criminals sentenced to death are hanged.
Since it was the Pushkarams time -- one of the rare occasions that comes once in 12 years -- the state government gave special permission to throw open some portions of the jail for common visitors. So, by the time I went to the execution chamber, the head warder there was explaining to the visitors the entire process of execution. The narration was so dramatic and so moving that I could see moist eyes among the visitors. Even the head warder could hardly control his emotions at that point.
It was way back in February 1976 that a convict was hanged to death for the last time in the Central Prison in Rajahmundry. Nambi Kistappa of Anantapur district was sentenced to death in a murder case. On the day of his execution, Kistappa was asked to spell out his last wish. "He had asked for a laddu," recalled head warder B Nageswara Rao, who witnessed the execution. The jail staff brought the laddu but Kistappa could hardly eat it -- having overcome by emotion. "It’s just a matter of a few seconds and the person falls on the ground (special underground chamber) – dead. It’s very painful for the executioner as well," Nageswara Rao observed. Kistappa's was the final execution in the Rajahmundry Central Prison.
The new hanging room in the prison was built in 1980 but not a single execution took place since then. In 1999, two convicts came very close to be hanged but a Presidential pardon granted them a fresh lease of life. Chalapathi Rao and Vijayavardhan of Guntur are now serving a life term in the sensational Chilakaluripet bus burning case.