THE date is set. So is the venue. At dawn on October 20, Mohamad Afzal will be hanged at Tihar prison in Delhi for his role in a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in 2001.

It will be only the second execution in India in more than a decade, and the first to take place in the capital since the assassins of Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister, were put to death in 1989.

There is only one problem: Delhi does not have a hangman. Prison authorities say that they have had to begin a nationwide search for an executioner because of a lack of experience in the country, where the death penalty is reserved for the “rarest of rare” cases. They may even have to call Nata Mullick, 84, the oldest and most seasoned hangman in India, out of retirement.

Sunil Gupta, a spokesman for Tihar prison, said that state governments would nominate candidates within the next week and that Mr Mullick would probably be on the list.

“The trouble is that hangings are very rare here,” Mr Gupta said. “You can’t suddenly give someone the job just for one execution.” It only took a couple of hours to train a hangman, but there was no substitute for experience, he said.

No one in India can rival Mr Mullick for that. The silver-haired, pot-bellied octogenarian has executed 25 people in his time, the last being a man convicted of raping and killing a minor in 2004.

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