Pakistani gunman Ajmal Kasab may have been sent to gallows but where is the hangman? This question popped up today after 22-year-old Kasab was ordered by a Mumbai trial court to be hanged by the neck until death since not a single hangman is on jail rolls. Maharashtra, whose capital Mumbai suffered the country''s worst terror attack in 2008, does not have a hangman.

The story is the same be it in the national capital''s Tihar jail where the last hanging was carried out in 1989 or in West Bengal which executed a capital punishment in 2004. "We had always borrowed hangman from other prisons.

Anyone who volunteers for the job can do it. Even if there is no hangman to be found, any police officer from the rank of a constable can also do it if he volunteers," a Tihar Jail official said.