PESHAWAR, July 6: A juvenile offender on death row for the last four years awaits the fate of his appeal before the Federal Shariat Court.

A trial court sentenced the boy, Tahir Khan, and a co-accused, to death on May 4, 1999, for killing a man in the jurisdiction of Chamkani police station. He has been imprisoned at Haripur central jail.

The boy is the only living son of a widow, who lost her other son in a road accident. During the pendency of his appeal, the widow started suffering from some mental disorder, and has now started losing her memory.

The woman could not bear the tragedy of the death of one of her sons, and capital punishment slapped on the other.

The trial court had not recorded his age at the time the charge was framed against him. Even the court had not mentioned his age in the judgment whereby he was sentenced to death.

Due to non-mentioning of his age in the charge and in the judgment, he was not considered a juvenile offender and the benefit of a presidential notification was not extended to him in 2001.

Under the said presidential notification, issued at the end of 2001, the death sentences were converted to life imprisonment of all such offenders who were juvenile at the time of occurrence of the offence.

His family members claimed that at the time of occurrence he was about 16. His mother told Dawn that being an illiterate woman, she was not aware about his exact date of birth, but one thing was clear to her that he was about 16 when he was arrested for the commission of the offence.

The criminal appeal of Tahir Khan, son of Muzzafar Shah of Charssada, was taken up for hearing by the Peshawar High Court in February last year. However, the high court referred the appeal to the Federal Shariat Court as the charge framed against him by the trial court was under section 17(3) of the Offence Against Property (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance, 1979. His appeal could only be heard by a full bench of the Shariat court.

For more than three months, the Shariat court was short of its sanctioned strength of judges, and only two judges were functioning there due to which his appeal could not be heard. Last month, four judges were appointed to this court. As the summer vacations of superior courts have started, Tahir Khan has now to wait for two months more for the fixing of his case.

The convict was arrested by the Chamkani police for the murder of a boy, Anwer Gul, on July 2, 1998. The complainant, Ahmad Gul, father of the deceased, had told the police that they were tending their cattle in the field when five persons tried to take away some of their sheep. On resistance, the accused killed Anwer Gul.

Voice of Prisoners’ chairman Noor Alam Khan advocate told Dawn that he would plead the case before the Shariat court, and would request it to conduct his medical examination to ascertain his age. He added that as the trial court had not mentioned his age, he could not get the benefit of the presidential notification about conversion of death penalties into life imprisonment.