Legal consultant on Child Rights for Ministry of Human Rights, Sharafat A. Chaudhry, said on Saturday that after lifting of moratorium on death penalty Pakistan has not executed any juvenile convict. Talking to Business Recorder, he said that Pakistan had been requested, being a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to submit its response to a number of questions including death penalty to juvenile to which Pakistan has worked out a response for United Nations Committee on the Right of the Child (UNCRC) over death penalty of juvenile convict.
One of the additional questions on Pakistan fifth periodic report on CRC for the UNCRC includes; "Please provide detailed information on investigations undertaken and their outcome, if any, into alleged juvenility, as well as into allegations of torture, in the cases of Ansar Iqbal, Shafqat Hussain, Aftab Bahadur, Faisal Mahmood and Muhammad Afzal - Please also explain how the right of a child to the rule of the benefit of the doubt is protected in cases where filed evidence of juvenility is dismissed on procedural grounds".
Responding to the question case by case, Chaudhry said that it has been noted that learned trial judges properly scrutinise the prosecution evidence as well as defence pleas taken by the accused persons in their statements and while doing so, entire facts and circumstances of cases were considered by the courts.
He said that the convicted persons - Ansar Iqbal, Shafqat Hussain, Aftab Bahadur, Faisal Mahmood and Muhammad Afzal - availed all judicial forums including the appellate forums of High Court and Supreme Court but could neither prove their innocence nor alleged claim of juvenility. "Additionally, on administrative grounds, the Ministry of Interior conducted inquires for these cases but the alleged claim of juvenility could not be proved," Chaudhry maintained.
Responding to the question relating to the case of Ansar Iqbal, he said the Supreme Court had comprehensively analysed the record and judgements of trial court as well as of high court, adding that the top court had dismissed the claim of Ansar's juvenility on merit and not on technical grounds. He claimed the accused person presented fake documents to prove his claim of juvenility as Ansar's school leaving certificate claimed his year of birth 1979, Form- B, allegedly issued by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), records his year of birth as 1978 while the NADRA record related to his father shows 1974 as his year of birth.
"The documents presented by Ansar could not be verified, thus the apex court decided to leave his appeal on merit considering all relevant material and evidence on record," Chaudhry said.
He also said that in Shafqat Hussain's case the claim of juvenility was never claimed upto the criminal revision petition before Supreme Court whereas in case of Faisal Mahmood, the claim of juvenility was never agitated and proved by the record except his solitary statement recorded under Section 342 CrPC during his trial.
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