On January 19, 1995 we learnt that Justices Kuldip Singh and B. L. Hansaria of the Supreme Court of India passed a judgement which forces doctors employed in prisons to participate in execution by hanging and thus violates medical ethics. This judgement was passed on a petition in the public interest against provisions, in the Punjab Jail Manual, on keeping the body of a condemned prisoner hanging for half an hour after falling from the scaffold. It was argued that such provision and practice were inhuman and barbarous.