Summary:
India's president has rejected a request to spare the lives of three people convicted of involvement in the assassination of a prominent Indian politician.

Full article:
New Delhi (CNN) -- Mercy petitions of three condemned prisoners jailed in connection with the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi have been turned down by India's President Pratibha Devisingh Patil, her spokeswoman told CNN Thursday. In 1999, India's supreme court confirmed death sentences for four of the people convicted of involvement in the suicide bomb attack on Gandhi in southern India. One of them was a woman, whose sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. The other three -- T Suthentharaja, V Sriharan and G Perarivalan -- remained on death row. Presidential spokeswoman Archana Datta said the mercy petitions of the condemned convicts have now been rejected. It's not yet known when the executions will be carried out. India blamed Sri Lanka's Tamil rebels of ordering the killing of Gandhi, who had sent Indian peacekeepers to the restive island nation. CNN's Harmeet Shah Singh contributed to this report.