The execution of a Sikh radical for his role in the assassination of a state chief minister by a suicide bomber in 1995 has been put on hold in India.
The decision comes after days of protests and strikes by Sikhs across the Sikh majority state of Punjab.
Balwant Singh Rajoana was scheduled to be hanged on Saturday at the notorious Patiala jail, and security across the region had been tightened in expectation of further disruption.
The government says his execution will now be stayed, pending an appeal made by the state government to the president.
If the hanging had gone ahead it would have been the first execution carried out in India since 2004.
Sikh organisations, politicians and rights groups had all called for the sentence to be commuted - but Rajoana has made it clear he will never appeal for clemency.
Rajoana was sentenced to death in 2007 for his role in the 1995 assassination of the then Punjab chief minister, Beant Singh, who was killed along with 15 other people by a suicide bomber.
Rajoana had acted as a standby assassin in case the initial attempt failed.
Radical Sikh groups had held Beant Singh responsible for abuses allegedly carried out by security forces in the suppression of a violent Sikh nationalist insurgency in Punjab in the 1980s.
Human Rights watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had called for Rajoana's execution to be suspended. They claim it would mark a major step backwards for India.
HRW South Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly says the execution "would merely continue the cycle of killing and retribution between the Sikh community and the Indian state that has long divided communities."
India's last execution in 2004 was of a former security guard. He was hanged for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old schoolgirl.
India has hundreds of condemned convicts awaiting execution, including the killers of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and Pakistani national Mohammed Ajmal Kasab - the sole surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
A complex and lengthy appeal process means those given capital punishment often sit on death row for many years. In most cases the death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.
