PESHAWAR, Oct 27: A juvenile offender, awarded capital punishment by a trial court, has been languishing in a death cell at Haripur prison for the last three years, awaiting 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.

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

As his age was not mentioned 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 last year.

Under the notification, issued last year, the death sentences were converted into life imprisonment of all offenders who were juvenile at the time of occurrence of the offence.

The convict in question is the only living son of an old woman, whose two other sons were killed in road accidents.

His family members, including his mother, claimed that at the time of occurrence he was about 16. His mother told Dawn that being an illiterate lady she was not aware of his exact date of birth, but one thing she was clear about was that he was 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 this 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, and thus his appeal could only be heard by a full bench of the Shariat court.

The convict was arrested by the Chamkani police in connection with 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 approached them and tried to forcefully take away some of their sheep. On resistance, the accused killed Anwer Gul.

The chairman, Voice of Prisoners, Noor Alam Khan, told Dawn that he would plead the case of the boy before the Shariat court and would request it to conduct his medical examination so as to ascertain his exact 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.