FILE: Surinder Koli is guilty of killing several children and young women in Nithari near Delhi
Just after midnight, a Supreme Court judge said in a special order from his home that Surinder Koli, found guilty of killing several children and young women at a house near Delhi, will not be executed for at least a week.
Koli, 42, had been sentenced to death by the Supreme Court for murdering 14-year-old Rimpa Halder in 2005 at a bungalow in Nithari, where as many as 19 girls are feared to have been raped and killed. The series of murders at the bungalow referred to as the "House of Horrors" shocked the country and were unearthed with the discovery of human bones in a drain. Koli worked as a domestic helper in that home.
Koli was set to be hanged anytime between September 7 and 12 in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.
(Also Read: This Hangman is Preparing for His Maiden Execution)But in a landmark ruling last week, the Supreme Court said that every death-row convict has the "fundamental right" to appeal in an open court against death penalties decided in judges' chambers.
Koli's petition against his hanging, filed by his lawyer Indira Jaising, will be heard by a special three-judge bench. "The open court will now decide whether his death sentence can be reviewed or not," she said.
Koli had confessed to having sex with his dead victims and also eating some of their body parts. He has already been convicted of five cases of murder, rape and cannibalism while a further 14 cases are still pending, although the death sentence given to him is based on the killing of Rimpa.
The Nithari killings were probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Bungalow owner Maninder Singh Pandher, who Koli worked for, was also charged with first degree murder in the same case, but he was acquitted in 2009.