The Senate Committee on Human Rights on Thursday expressed serious concern over execution of two brothers - Ghulam Sarwar and Ghulam Qadir - even before Supreme Court set aside the death penalty and also demanded inquiry and punishment to the responsible. The committee met with Senator Nasreen Jalil in the chair. Raising the issue though was not on the regular agenda Senator Farhatullah Babar said "unconscionable and unpardonable murder by the state must not be allowed to go unpunished."
He said two brothers were sentenced to death by Lahore High Court, Multan bench in May 2009 in a murder case against which they went in appeal to the Supreme Court. Earlier, this month a three-member bench of the Supreme Court accepting the appeal set aside the High Court verdict and ordered their release.
However, no sooner were the convictions set aside it transpired that the president had already rejected their mercy petitions and they had been sent to the gallows in Bahawalpur jail in October last year, he said. "This is an issue of grave miscarriage of justice and calls for reforming the criminal justice system on the one hand and restore moratorium on executions on the other," he said.
He said that hundreds had been awarded death penalty across the country and their appeals were in process. In order to prevent the fate of Ghulam brothers befalling them the moratorium on execution should be restored as the current system of capital punishment was reviewed, he said.
The Committee accepted the plea and demanded of the government to probe the matter and award exemplary punishment to those involved. Farhatullah Babar also raised the issue of mentally-ill Imdad Ali whose appeal against conviction on ground of mental illness was set aside by apex court last week.
The Supreme Court did not recognize schizophrenia as mental illness stating that it was curable and holding that a medically diagnosed schizophrenic patient could be executed, he said. Babar said he was disappointed with the verdict which enlarged the scope of death penalty. He called for re-evaluating the relationship between criminality and illness and proposed special legislation to provide guidelines to the courts on the treatment of mentally-ill offenders.
The Committee decided to approach the Presidency through the Interior Ministry for staying the execution of Imdad Ali, another convicted murderer who has been sentenced to death by the top court. On the issue of enforced disappearances, the Committee formulated a set of questions and asked the Balochistan Home Secretary to give replies before the next meeting.
It asked about the total number of those killed and bodies found dumped in A and B areas of Balochistan during the last five years, copies of the FIRs, whether DNA tests of victims was carried out and if not, why not and whether there is any nexus between those reported as missing and those killed and dumped. The Balochistan Home Secretary asked one-month time to furnish reply to the questions raised by the committee members. The committee also made a set of recommendations for jail reforms.
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