Nithari killer Surender Koli
The government today recommended the rejection of the mercy pleas of six death row convicts including Surender Koli, who was convicted of killing young children in Nithari near Delhi nearly a decade ago.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh has reportedly recommended to President Pranab Mukherjee that the mercy pleas of Koli and five others - Renukabai, Seema, Rajendra Pralhadrao Wasnik, Jagdish and Holiram Bordoloi should be rejected.
In a case that horrified India, 42-year-old Koli was found guilty of serial rapes and murders between 2005 and 2006 at his employer, businessman Moninder Singh Pandher's house in Nithari, Noida. Remains of several missing children were found near the house.
Koli was sentenced to death in four cases and his death sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2011.
Two others in the government's "no mercy" list are sisters Seema and Renukabai, who were convicted of kidnapping and killing five children in Maharashtra between 1990 and 1996. They used to kidnap poor children and force them to commit thefts. When the children grew older, the women killed them by bashing their heads in, hitting them with iron rods or strangling them.
Mr Mukherjee can return the cases to the ministry for reconsideration only once, after which he is constitutionally obliged to sign off on the home ministry's advice.
The president represents the last legal resort for a death row convict and Mr Mukherjee's three predecessors have often stonewalled when it came to convicts that the home ministry recommended should not be granted mercy.
In January this year, the Supreme Court ruled that "inordinate and inexplicable" delays in hanging are grounds for commuting a convict's death penalty and spared 15 men from execution.