The Allahabad High Court on Friday stayed the execution of Surinder Koli, convicted of serial killings in Nithari village of Noida, till November 25.
Hearing a petition filed by the NGO, People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), the court asked the Centre to explain the delay in deciding his mercy petition.
The PUDR had argued that excessive and unexplained delay in executing Koli’s death sentence had caused unnecessary and unavoidable pain, suffering and mental torment to the convict. Koli, therefore, deserved mercy on humanitarian grounds, it said.
Significantly, earlier this year, the Supreme Court had ruled that long delay in deciding on a death convict’s mercy plea could be a valid reason to commute his sentence to life imprisonment.
Koli was to be hanged in Meerut jail last month, but his sentence was suspended twice by the Supreme Court. In February 2011, however, it confirmed the death sentence.
In July this year, President Pranab Mukherjee rejected Koli’s mercy petition.
