Jail authorities in the eastern Indian state of Orissa...

Jail authorities in the eastern Indian state of Orissa suspended their search for a hangman after the death sentence of Dayanidhi Bishnoi, 35, was commuted to life imprisonment. Bishnoi had been sentenced to death in 2000 for killing a couple and their three-year-old daughter in Orissa's Jeypore village.
He was due to be executed on August 23 at Orissa's 139-year-old Berhampur jail, built during British colonial rule. But Orissa state governor M.M. Rajendran commuted Bishnoi's death sentence to life imprisonment on humanitarian grounds, said Berhampur jail superintendent Bankim Chandra Mohanty.
The news saw jail authorities heaving a sigh of relief as they had not been prepared for an execution and had been planning to bring in a hangman from a neighbouring state to carry out the death sentence. The last execution in the prison was carried out in 1995 and the state has no official hangman.