Death sentence of Indians who killed a Pakistani commuted

An Emirati court has commuted the death sentences handed down against 17 Indians last year to two years in prison, paving the way for their return home soon, one of their lawyers said on Tuesday.The Sharjah Court of Appeals has commuted the death sentence to two years in prison followed by deportation, Abdullah Salman told AFP.The 17 men, who were arrested in 2009, will be released on time served and return back to their country in the coming days, he added.A Sharjah court of first instance in March 2010 sentenced the 17 to die after convicting them of beating to death a Pakistani man identified as Masri Khan in what was said to be a dispute between rival bootleg liquor gangs.But the convicts avoided execution after Indian charities and businessmen in Dubai and India paid the victims family around three million dirhams ($817,000) in blood money, said Salman.Under sharia, or Islamic law, the family of a murder victim can waive the death penalty for the perpetrator. This is often done in exchange for money, known as blood money.State-owned Abu Dhabi newspaper The National reported last year that the convicts had denied any knowledge of the deceased and denied being involved in a bootlegging operation that allegedly led to the mans death.They said that they had never spoken to a public prosecutor, and all the confessions were extracted by police after severe beatings, the paper added.Indians form the largest expatriate community in the United Arab Emirates, estimated at around 1.75 million people out of a total population of nearly eight million people.