Dhananjoy Chatterjee was judicially executed in Alipore Central Correctional Home in Kolkata on 14 August 2004. He had been charged with the crimes of raping and killing of Hetal Parekh, an 18 year old school-girl, on 5th March, 1990, in her third floor apartment in Kolkata. The execution stirred up many public controversies and attracted attention from media. Dhananjoy was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidences only. He had consistently maintained his innocence throughout his trial and imprisonment, which lasted more than 14 years.
A closer look at the court documents reveals strong reasons to suspect that Dhananjoy Chatterjee had been a completely innocent victim of the ills of the Indian law-enforcement and legal systems and even of the social prejudices amplified by mass media. The arguments have been put forward in a book and in several other forms.
Dhananoy Chatterjee's case poses a standing challenge for the Indian judicial system to redeem its mistakes that appear to be capable of judicial killing of a completely innocent person. Judicial error has been acknowledged in respect of multiple death row convicts in Canada, Japan, Taiwan, UK and USA leading to their acquittal, but there is no such instance in India. There have been many instances of judicial exoneration of wrongfully executed persons in Australia, China, Ireland, Russia, Taiwan, UK and USA. Dhananjoy Chatterjee's case has the potential to be the first one in India.
How India might have hanged a completely innocent person (pdf here)
ধনঞ্জয়ের ফাঁসি - নিরপরাধের মৃত্যুদণ্ড, 2015 Bangla booklet by Debasis Sengupta and Probal Chaudhuri
আদালত-মিডিয়া-সমাজ এবং ধনঞ্জয়ের ফাঁসি, 2016 Bangla book by Debasis Sengupta, Probal Chaudhuri and Paramesh Goswami (Google e-book here, Amazon kindle version here)
