RAWALPINDI: Two murder convicts, whose execution was deferred last month, are set to be hanged in the Adiala Jail on Tuesday.

The hanging of retired Capt Zaffar Iqbal was postponed twice last month. On April 25, his execution was delayed on the directives of the sessions court after a petition was filed with the court stating that his family had reached a settlement with the heirs of the victims.

Earlier, Iqbal was scheduled to be hanged on April 14 but his execution was deferred at that time too.

Iqbal was awarded the death sentence for killing 11 members of his family in the Arya Mohallah of Rawalpindi and Sangori village of Mandra on January 10, 1994.

The review petition of the convicted murderer was rejected by a three-member bench of the Supreme Court in 2008 and his mercy appeal was also turned down by the president of Pakistan.

The convicted murderer held his last meeting with his family members, including his son Tasawar Iqbal, a day before he was scheduled to be executed on April 25.

Since he already held his last meeting with his family on April 24, the jail authorities said the convict’s family would not be called again.

Zaffar Iqbal had killed six members of his relative Capt Sarwar Shaheed’s family in the Arya Mohallah and later gunned down five other members of the family in the Sangori village of Mandra.

Another murder convict, Mirza Sarfaraz Ahmed, a resident of Gujar Khan, whose execution was deferred last month, will also be hanged on Tuesday.

Ahmed was arrested in August 1993 in a murder case and later sentenced to death. On April 24, his hanging was deferred to April 27 after his counsel filed a petition with the Lahore High Court (LHC), claiming that the convict was a juvenile at the time of the crime.

The LH directed the sessions judge Rawalpindi to probe the matter and submit a report. In the light of the report, the LHC rejected the petition and later the counsel for the convict filed a petition with the Supreme Court.

“As the plea was also rejected by the apex court, the trial court (ATC-1) issued his death warrants on Saturday. His family will visit the jail on Monday for their last meeting with Sarfaraz,” a prison department official said.

Since the government lifted the moratorium on executions in the wake of the APS attack in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, over 250 convicts, some of them involved in terrorism-related cases, have been hanged across the country.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2016