ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has ruled that mental illness like schizophrenia cannot be a reason to repeal the death sentence of a murder convict.

“Schizophrenia is not a permanent mental disorder, rather imbalance, increasing or decreasing depending upon the level of stress,” said an 11-page judgement authored by Chief Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali.

The apex court issued the verdict while deciding a petition moved by Safia Bano, wife of convict Imdad Ali, against the dismissal of her appeal by the Lahore High Court’s Multan bench on Aug 23.

The high court had dismissed the appeal against the death sentence awarded by a trial court when black warrants were issued for execution of Imdad Ali on July 26. The president had already rejected his mercy petition on Nov 17 last year.

Imdad Ali was sentenced to death in 2002 for killing a cleric.

The Supreme Court judgement recalled that in recent years the prognosis of ailments like schizophrenia had been improved with drugs by vigorous psychological and social managements and rehabilitation. It was, therefore, a recoverable disease which in all the cases did not fall within the definition of “mental disorder” as defined in the Mental Health Ordinance 2001, the verdict said.


Rules schizophrenia is not mental illness, paving way for execution of murder convict


The judgement also cited a 1977 verdict from the Indian Supreme Court in the case of Amrit Bhushan Gupta versus Union of India having somewhat similar facts and circumstances. Amrit Gupta was sentenced to death for having committed culpable homicide which amounted to murder. His appeals in the high court as well as in the Indian Supreme Court were dismissed and his sentence was upheld. Likewise, his mercy petition was also rejected by the Indian president, the SC verdict recalled.

In his judgement, Chief Justice Jamali observed that all material placed on record had been perused which revealed that indeed right from the stage of trial, Imdad Ali took such a plea in defence, but all the courts (trial court and high court) discarded his plea of mental illness, which could be made the basis to term him lunatic.

“Even the medical record produced before us reveals that the husband (Imdad Ali) was all along considered a psychiatric patient suffering from paranoid schizophrenia,” the judgement said.

It observed that the high court had in its order aptly taken into account all relevant facts and circumstances in the light of Prison Rules 1978 and thus rightly rejected the plea of the petitioner (Safia Bano) and dismissed her petition.

“In our opinion, rules relating to mental sickness are not subjugative to delay the execution of death sentence, which has been awarded to the convict, Imdad Ali, and attained finality up to the level of this court, especially when all relevant facts had received due consideration in appropriate quarters and the mercy petition had already been dismissed by the president,” the Supreme Court ruled.

“This being the reason, leave is declined and this petition is dismissed,” the verdict concluded.

Published in Dawn October 22nd, 2016

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