Highlights
- Nithari killer Surinder Koli's death sentence has been commuted to life in jail by the Allahabad High Court.
Nithari killer Surinder Koli's death sentence has been commuted to life in jail by the Allahabad High Court.
The Supreme Court had ruled last year that a death sentence can be commuted to life because of a long delay in a decision on a convict's mercy plea.
Koli, 42, is a self-confessed cannibal found guilty 10 years ago of murdering young women and children at a bungalow near Delhi.
Koli was to be hanged last year in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh but his execution was suspended twice by the Supreme Court.
Koli had confessed to having sex with his dead victims and also eating some of their body parts.
He worked at the home of Moninder Singh Pandher in the area of Nithari in Noida on the outskirts of Delhi where as many as 19 girls are feared to have been raped and killed. He was sentenced to hang for murdering 14-year-old Rimpa Halder in 2005.
He has already been convicted of five cases of murder, rape and cannibalism while 14 more cases are still pending.
Though his employer Moninder Singh Pandher was also charged with first degree murder in the same case, he was acquitted in 2009. Mr Pandher was released from jail last year.