ISLAMABAD: On the eve of ‘World Day Against Death Penalty’, former Senator and president human rights cell PPP Farhatullah Babaron Friday called for a broad-based national debate on abolishing the death penalty.

“Until the death penalty is abolished as a result of a larger public debate on the efficacy of death penalty in deterring crime, the victims should be given right to proper defence and protected against torture for extracting confession,” he said.

The former Senator said that number of crimes carrying the death penalty must be drastically decreased from the present over 30 and juveniles and mentally challenged persons be spared from execution.

Legal and consular services to migrant Pakistani workers be ensured and the procedure for mercy petitions against executions streamlined.

He said that studies showed that Pakistan executed only the poorest and the most marginalised whose fair trial rights were often violated and convicts were tortured in the broken criminal justice system. Highlighting it, he said that sometime back two brothers accused of murder were acquitted by the Supreme Court after years on death row but only after they had been hanged.

After the APS massacre in December 2014 there was a public outcry to hang the terrorists. However according to a study by Justice Project Pakistan over 85 % of the executions carried out thereafter were for ordinary crimes and not related to terrorism, he said.

“States abolishing the death penalty have increased and more and more Muslim countries had placed moratorium on executions but in Pakistan the number of crimes carrying the death penalty had progressively increased,” he said and added that as murder was punishable with death or life imprisonment a measure of arbitrariness in giving death penalty was unavoidable.

He said that there were also court judgments calling for ‘justice with mercy’ and that reasons must be recorded why a judge ordered death instead of life imprisonment, he said adding: “Court verdicts emphasizing justice with mercy must be the norm and not exception.”

The Quran stressed mercy and forgiveness. The Quranic injunction ‘in just retribution there is life for you’ (2:179) was a subtle suggestion that ‘ qisas’ (retribution) was not revenge but protection of life. The Quran emphasized life, not revenge, he said.

Former Senator said that death penalty is irreversible, has doubtful deterrence value and militates against the poor. “The fact that a large number of convictions are set aside on appeal showed that the death penalty resulted in appalling miscarriage of justice, he said calling for a broad based debate to abolish death penalty,” he said.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2025