KARACHI, Aug 7: An anti-terrorism court issued on Tuesday a black warrant for a condemned prisoner and fixed Aug 25 for his hanging.

Shafqat Hussain was sentenced to death for killing a seven-year-old boy in 2004.

The then judge of the ATC-III, Judge Arshad Noor Khan, had on Sept 1, 2004 found him guilty of killing Umair, son of a car dealer, whom he had kidnapped for ransom in April 2004 within the remit of the New Town police station.

Later, the convict moved an appeal against his conviction in the Sindh High Court, but the SHC upheld the death sentence. He moved the Supreme Court which also maintained the death penalty and dismissed his appeal. The president also dismissed his mercy petition.

Jail authorities informed the court about the dismissal of the mercy petition by the president and requested it to issue a black warrant for the execution of the convict.

Judge Ghulam Mustafa Memon of the ATC-III issued the black warrant on Tuesday directing the jail authorities to hang the convict till death at 4:30am on Aug 25.

However, it is unlikely that the convict will be executed since the Pakistan People Party-led government has stayed every execution since it came into power in 2008.

According to the prosecution, the convict was the watchman of a residential building, Nadeem Arcade, and he kidnapped Umair as he came downstairs from his second-floor apartment. The convict took the boy to his room. He clubbed him to death when the boy insisted on leaving and dumped the body in the room.

He demanded a ransom from the victim's father and disposed of the body the next night in a nearby drain and kept on calling the victim's family from different public call offices for the ransom. Finally, he asked the victim's father to place the money under a wooden box lying inside the compound of Nadeem Arcade, which led to his arrest on May 21 as the police found that the box belonged to the watchman, the prosecution concluded.

A case (FIR 136/04) was registered under Section 356-A (kidnapping for ransom) and 302 (premeditated murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with Section 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.