The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Monday upheld the execution order of a condemned prisoner, Shafqat Hussain, rejecting a plea seeking a judicial inquiry to determine his age by deeming it inadmissible. An IHC bench headed by Justice Athar Minallah had delayed Shafqat's execution last week for a third time in response to a petition filed by Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) - a non-governmental organisation working in the legal arena for prisoners facing the harshest punishment.
The JPP was pleading for holding a judicial inquiry into the age of Shafqat Hussain as it insists that he was underage when he committed the crime. Shafqat Hussain, the counsel for JPP said that court has turned down the plea seeking judicial probe into the age of the convict.
Shafqat was scheduled to be hanged to death on May 6 after an anti-terrorism court (ATC) had issued his death warrants on April 24. The April 24 warrant came after an executive inquiry by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) declaring that Shafqat was not a juvenile when he killed a seven-year-old boy in Karachi. Quoting the FIA probe report, the bench headed by Justice Athar Minallah said that the inquiry conducted by agency shows that the convict was not a juvenile when he committed the crime.
Dr Tariq Hassan, the petitioner's counsel, had pointed out that the Supreme Court in 2003 had dealt with an identical matter where a death-row convict was seeking the benefit under the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, 2000. He said the apex court had held that only a judicial forum could determine the age of an accused.
Shafqat was working as a guard at an apartment in Karachi in 2004 when a seven-year-old boy mysteriously went missing from the neighbourhood. A few days later the boy's family received calls from Shafqat's mobile phone demanding a ransom of half a million rupees which helped the police to nab him.
Shafqat was arrested. He confessed to the heinous act of crime during his first interrogation and admitted that he kidnapped the innocent boy (Umair) and then killed him and threw him in a nearby stream. He was sentenced to death in 2004. However, the convict later withdrew his confession, saying he had made it under duress, but the case came before an anti-terrorism court which sentenced him to death.
In late 2014 after the government lifted the moratorium on capital punishment, rights activists contended that Shafqat was a juvenile at the time of the incident. He was then set to be executed on March 19 but a day before the sentencing civil society representatives gathered in front of the presidency against the order. The hanging was subsequently postponed for 72 hours and then for 30 days. A third death warrant for Shafqat Hussain was issued on April 24 after an executive inquiry by the FIA concluded that he was not a minor at the time the crime was committed.
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