PESHAWAR: Shariah Court to take up death-row appeal on Sept 20
By Waseem Ahmad Shah
PESHAWAR, Sept 16: A full bench of the Federal Shariah Court will take up for hearing on September 20 an appeal filed by a juvenile offender who has been on death row for more than eight years.
The appellant, Tahir Khan, has been languishing in a death cell in the Haripur central prison since his conviction by a court in Peshawar on May 4, 1999. His appeal has been lingering on without any noteworthy progress.
He claimed that he was a juvenile offender at the time of the crime. His counsel told Dawn that with each passing day his desperation was on the rise and in his last letter from prison he had said: “Either I should be hanged or my appeal should be heard.”
The appellant stated that nobody could imagine how difficult it was to spend even a single day in a death cell.
A bench headed by the Shariat Court’s Chief Justice Hazikul Khairi would take up for hearing the appeal on Sept 20 in Islamabad, said Noor Alam Khan, chairman, Voice of Prisoners.
He said that although at this stage it would be difficult to prove that the appellant was a juvenile offender but he had traced certain dates which would help them in determining his age to some extent.
The appellant was convicted along with a co-accused, Anwer Hussain. The two were sentenced to death for murdering a boy in the jurisdiction of the Chamkani police station on July 2, 1998. Initially, their appeals were pending before the Peshawar High Court and in February 2002 the court transferred the appeals to the Federal Shariat Court.
The high court had observed that as the two convicts were charged under the Offence Against Property (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979, therefore, their appeal could only be heard by the Shariat Court.
The appellant claimed that he was only 16 at the time of the occurrence of the crime. However, neither his counsel agitated the issue nor did the trial court recorded his age during the trial.
As the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 was not in the field at that time, the issue of age was not touched by the trial court or the defence counsel. Under the ordinance, death penalty could not be slapped on a juvenile offender.
Tahir was the only living son of an old widow whose two other sons were killed in a road accident. During the initial days after his conviction, the poor lady used to roam around the high court and other courts requesting every passer-by to help her. The lady has not been seen in local courts during the last few years and some lawyers say that she might have died.
The convict was arrested by the Chamkani police in connection with the murder of a boy, Anwer Gul. The complainant, Ahmad Gul, Anwer’s father, had told the police that they were tending to their sheep in the field when five people approached them and tried to forcefully take away some of their sheep. On resistance, the accused killed Anwer.
