Indian authorities Thursday stayed the hanging of a Kolkata apartment guard convicted over a teenage girl's rape and murder in what would have been India's first execution in 15 years.
The stay came as Indian President Abdul Kalam reviewed an appeal for clemency by a human rights group. The convict's elderly parents had threatened to commit suicide if the execution scheduled for Friday was carried out.
"The hanging of Dhananjoy Chatterjee has been postponed," West Bengal state's Law Minister Nisith Adhikari told AFP. "It is not going to happen tomorrow."
The state's top prosecutor Balai Roy said the execution would be stayed until the president decided on the petition for clemency.
Chatterjee, a former apartment guard and elevator operator, was convicted of raping and killing a 16-year-old tenant as she returned from school in 1990 in Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal.
The sentence would have been carried out by 83-year-old Nata Mallick, who had said he was tying nooses at home for practice and would bring to the gallows his 20-year-old grandson who would succeed him as Calcutta's hangman.
Mallick and his grandson inspected the prison gallows together Thursday morning, but the elder hangman said he was not bothered that he could not execute Chatterjee at the set time.
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