CHENNAI, India, Aug. 30 (UPI) -- September hanging sentences for three men in the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi were stayed for eight weeks by an Indian high court.
The order was issued Tuesday by the court in Chennai, capital of the southern Tamil Nadu state.
Officials there had appealed to Indian President Pratibha Patil to reconsider the men's mercy pleas, the Press Trust of India reported. Earlier this month, Patil rejected their mercy petitions.
The stay order came while the court heard a petition by the condemned men for their sentences to be commuted. The stay gives government officials time to respond to the petitions.
The hangings had been scheduled for Sept. 9.
The three -- Murugan, T. Suthendra Raja and A.G. Perarivalan -- had been sentenced to die for conspiring to assassinate Gandhi.
Gandhi died in a suicide bomb attack while addressing an election rally in 1991 near Chennai, formerly called Madras. Many others also died in the attack.
Lawyer Ram Jethmalani, one of the attorneys representing the three, told the court a delay of more than 11 years by the federal government in deciding the mercy petitions was unconstitutional.
The petitions had asked whether the delay violated their fundamental rights even if their death sentence was just, the Times of India reported.
Gandhi was killed by a Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger suicide bomber apparently in retaliation for his 1987 decision as prime minister to send an Indian peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's military eventually ended the Tamil Tiger rebellion in May 2009.
Gandhi's mother Indira Gandhi and grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru were also prime ministers. Sonia Gandhi, the widow of Rajiv, now heads the Congress Party, which leads the country's ruling coalition. The family is not (not) related to Mahatma Gandhi.
