Nithari killer Surinder Koli asks if hanging is painful

A jittery Nithari killer Surendra Koli, who is spending anxious last days in a Meerut prison in Uttar Pradesh as he awaits the hangman's noose, has asked officials whether hanging is "painful".

Having missed the noose by hours on Monday after the Supreme Court deferred his execution by a week, Koli is spending uneasy moments inside his high-security prison cell and has turned to religious books. Koli was moved to Meerut from shifted out of the Dasna prison in Ghaziabad, which housed him for almost a decade, after his death warrant was issued.

Usually normal and to himself, the news of his impending execution triggered "depression and anxiety" in the man who reportedly never repented what he had done. He was arrested from the D-5 Kothi in Noida in 2005 after news of the sensational killing of children broke in the village of Nithari skirting a middle class Noida neighourhood. Most of the killed were children of household helps and others who worked in Noida homes as drivers, guards, etc.

"He (Koli) is enquiring from prison staff about the date when he would be hung and was the whole procedure a painful and long one," a prison official told IANS. He is also spotted at times mumbling what the prison staff says is 'Hanuman Chalisa' and some Hindu hymns.

Largely though, prison officials say he is aloof and "not in a mood to talk much". "He is most of the time expressionless but, yes, of late anxiety is writ large on his face and that is for all to see," said a source.

Koli's mother Kunti Devi met him in the prison on Thursday.