ISLAMABAD: A Rawalpindi division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday rejected the petition filed by a murder convict, challenging his death warrants issued on September 18 while moratorium was in force.

A district and sessions judge convicted Shuaib Sarwar in July 1998 for murdering Awais Nawaz, when Sarwar was a minor.

He challenged his conviction in LHC, which was rejected in July 2003. He then moved the Supreme Court, but there too his appeal was turned down in April 2006.

Sarwar’s clemency petition was also rejected by the president.

Though the convict had exhausted all forums of appeal, he was not executed. This forced the victim’s brother to move the high court in August last year against the delay in the sentence’s implementation.

In August 2014, when the government failed to produce any documents proving that the moratorium was still in force, the high court ordered the district and sessions judge to implement the sentence.

The district and sessions judge signed a death warrant and directed the Adiala jail superintendent to execute the convict on September 18.

However, Rana Kashif the counsel for Sarwar filed a petition in the LHC against the death warrants. Initially, the court stayed the execution when the unofficial moratorium was in force.

However, as the petition was fixed after lifting of moratorium, the bench rejected the appeal and directed the government to proceed in this matter.

Published in Dawn January 15th , 2015

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