LAHORE: The Supreme Court on Monday converted death sentence of a murder convict into life imprisonment giving him the benefit of a 2001 notification by the president that gave retrospective effect to Justice System Ordinance 2000, which prohibits death penalty for juveniles.

Muhammad Anwar, the convict, had been charged with committing murder of one Israr Ahmed in March 1993 and was arrested thereafter in the same month. Since then he had been behind bars.

He was sentenced to death by a sessions court in 1998 and it was upheld in 2002 by the Lahore High Court and the same was maintained in Supreme Court in 2007.

The convict filed applications to the sessions court twice for relief under the presidential notification but the same were dismissed. The sessions court maintained that since conviction had been upheld by the Supreme Court, therefore no interference by sessions court was possible.

The high court too upheld the finding on the same ground against which Justice Project Pakistan, an NGO working for the rights of prisoners, filed the civil petition for leave to appeal in 2016 on behalf of the brother of the convict.

During Monday’s hearing, Advocate Anwaar Hussain, on behalf of the appellant, argued that while the conviction was maintained by the Supreme Court it was an admitted fact that the presidential notification was retrospective in nature.

He said since the medical test by way of ossification conducted in 2002 by the government official itself showed that the convict was between the age of 16-21 at the time of commission of offence. Therefore, the counsel said, the convict was entitled to benefit of the notification without referring the matter back to sessions court for determination of issue of juvenility.

Headed by Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik, a three-judge bench of the SC observed that the documents submitted by the government itself showed the age bracket of the convict which must be liberally and leniently construed in favour of the convict.

The bench further observed that the age recorded in the statement of the convict under section 342 CrPC also showed that the convict at the time of the occurrence was less than 19 years as the age was recorded on tentative visual assessment.

Allowing the appeal, the bench converted the death penalty of the convict into life imprisonment.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2021