Since he was launched from jail final June, Shahjahan Bouya, 70, wrote a top-selling e-book narrating his experiences as a hangman, briefly married a younger lady 50 years youthful than him, and in current weeks took TikTok by storm with quick clips with teenage women.
He felt chest ache on Monday morning at his residence in Hemayetpur, an industrial city exterior the capital Dhaka, and was rushed to Dhaka’s Suhrawardy Hospital, police mentioned.
“He was introduced in useless — docs have not ascertained the precise explanation for his dying,” Sajib Dey, a police station chief in Dhaka, advised AFP.
“He had respiratory difficulties,” Abul Kashem, Bouya’s landlord, advised AFP. “He rented certainly one of our rooms solely 15 days in the past. He lived alone.”
Bouya had been serving a 42-year-old jail time period over a homicide. But the handfuls of hangings he did within the jails helped scale back his sentence resulting in his launch from Dhaka’s prime jail final 12 months.
MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP by way of Getty Images
Bangladesh ranks third on the planet for dying sentences handed, in response to rights group Amnesty International, and assigns convicts to hold out the hangings.
Between 2018 and 2022, Amnesty International reported that 912 dying sentences have been imposed by trial courts in Bangladesh. As of December 2022, a minimum of 2,000 individuals have been condemned to die within the nation, Amnesty mentioned.
“A hangman has a lot energy”
A well-read Marxist revolutionary, Bouya within the Seventies joined the outlawed Sarbahara rebels making an attempt to topple a authorities they noticed as puppets of neighboring India. He was convicted for the 1979 dying of a truck driver in crossfire with police.
In custody throughout his trial — a glacial 12-year course of — he observed the “top notch” remedy afforded to executioners, watching one being massaged by 4 different inmates.
“A hangman has a lot energy,” he mentioned to himself and volunteered his providers.
Prison authorities put Bouya’s whole at 26 executions, however he mentioned he participated in 60.
Those to die at his palms included navy officers discovered responsible of plotting a 1975 coup and killing the nation’s founding chief, the daddy of present Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Activists say that Bangladesh’s felony justice system is deeply flawed, however Bouya shrugged off their criticisms, though he believes a minimum of three of these he executed have been harmless.
“Even if you happen to really feel unhealthy for him, can you retain him alive, or are you able to save him?” he told AFP final 12 months. “If I did not cling them, another person would have completed the job.”
In February, his e-book on his years as a hangman was printed and have become a best-seller at Bangladesh’s largest e-book annual e-book truthful.
His 96-page e-book narrates the procedures of hanging by ropes the nation inherited from the British colonial rulers.
He described the method nonchalantly, by no means wading into the debates over the abolition of executions.
He additionally dwelled on the ultimate moments of among the nation’s controversial figures and serial killers.
After his launch from jail, he proudly confirmed guests a small piece of the rope — one wire can last as long as a decade — on which many inmates died.
“People consider it has extraordinary energy,” he mentioned, including some used fiber from it as talismanic charms in amulets or tied round their wrists.
