Letters from Death Row

The arts have a huge role to play in changing the atmosphere within prisons and in getting the world to engage with prisoners as people

- Tanul Thakur

AMID the genteel chats before an exhibition at India International Centre (IIC), in Delhi, a silent screen outside the hall—displaying a presentation, attracting little attention—screams stories, pleas, and stats. “People on death row in India. 24.5%, Scheduled Castes. 76%, backward classes and religious minorities. 87%, those with no criminal record,” reads one such slide. “Chitrabhanu has been on death row for 20 years,” says another. “He made a noose from his handkerchief to understand how it might feel to be hanged.” Cut to: three large clocks whose minute hands sweep back and forth, mimicking the absurdity of time inside the closing walls of a prison. A block of text fades out the rightmost piece: “I’m an unwanted, unclaimed person who has spent double the time in jail as he has on the outside. Now all I ask is that I either be released, or killed.”

Organised by National Law University’s Project 39A, the presentation is part of an online exhibition (www.capitalletters.in) featuring art and letters by inmates on death row. Besides displaying them, the event includes performances by theatre artist Maya Rao and classical singer T M Krishna. Ten minutes before the scheduled start, a modest gathering has turned into a crowd, spilling more introductions, conversations, and laughs. Some attendees, standing near the front enclosure’s entrance, pore over the “prisoners’ ID cards” in a trunk. The flap cards, half the size of a palm, share more stories. “Chetan, Telangana. Born: 1986. Sentenced to death: 2021. Age at death sentence: 35,” says one of the covers. Its inside tucks a message by his mother underpinning his intellectual disability: “I do not think he even understands what a death sentence means or why he is being punished.”