Police officers speak at a conference at the hospital where Shahjahan Bouya died. (File)
Dhaka:
Bangladesh’s deadliest executioner died on Monday, a year after being released from prison where he hanged some of the country’s notorious serial killers, opposition politicians convicted of war crimes and coup plotters, police said.
Since being released from prison last June, Shahjahan Bouya, 70, has written a best-selling book chronicling his experiences as an executioner, briefly married a young woman 50 years his junior and, in recent weeks, taken TikTok by storm with clips shorts with teenagers.
He felt chest pains on Monday morning at his home in Hemayetpur, an industrial town on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, and was rushed to Dhaka’s Suhrawardy Hospital, police said.
“He was brought in dead – doctors have not determined the real cause of his death,” Sajib Dey, head of the police station in Dhaka, told AFP.
“He had breathing difficulties,” Abul Kashem, Bouya’s owner, told AFP. “He rented one of our rooms just 15 days ago. He lived alone.”
Bouya was serving a 42-year prison sentence for murder.
But the dozens of hangings he carried out in prisons helped reduce his sentence, leading to his release from Dhaka’s main prison last year.
Bangladesh ranks third in the world in terms of death sentences handed down, according to rights group Amnesty International, and assigns convicts to carry out hangings.
‘So much power’
An educated Marxist revolutionary, Bouya, in the 1970s, joined the illegal Sarbahara rebels who were trying to overthrow a government they considered puppets of neighboring India.
He was convicted of the 1979 death of a truck driver in a crossfire with police.
In custody during his trial – a glacial 12-year process – he noted the “first class” treatment meted out to his executioners, watching one of them being massaged by four other inmates.
“An executioner has so much power,” he said to himself, and offered his services.
Prison authorities estimate Bouya’s total of 26 executions, but he says he participated in 60.
Those who died at his hands included military officers found guilty of planning a coup d’état in 1975 and killing the country’s founding leader, the father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Activists say Bangladesh’s criminal justice system is deeply flawed, but Bouya ignored the criticism despite believing that at least three of those he executed were innocent.
In February, his book about his years as an executioner was published and became a bestseller at Bangladesh’s biggest annual book fair.
His 96-page book chronicles the rope hanging procedures the country inherited from British colonial rulers.
He described the process nonchalantly, never entering into debates about abolishing executions.
He also dwelled on the final moments of some of the country’s controversial figures and serial killers.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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