ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has admitted a petition wherein a juvenile offender, Mohammad Anwar, is alleged to have been unlawfully denied the benefit of an inquiry into his age under a notification by the president.

Anwar was sentenced to death in 1998 for a crime allegedly committed when he was 17 years old. The Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO), which prohibits the death penality for juvenile offenders, was enacted in 2000.

In 2001, a presidential notification extended the benefit of the law to all juvenile offenders sentenced to death prior to the ordinance following a determination of age by the Home Department.

However, after the notification the SC held that the lawful forum to carry out the inquiry was the sessions court.

Anwar’s family submitted an application to the Home Department asked that he be granted special remission on the basis of his age. Although an age determination inquiry was initiated by the department, which gathered contemporaneous birth records showing that Anwar was a juvenile at the time of the offence, the inquiry was never completed due to the SC decision.

Since then, Anwar’s family has tried to request an age determination from the sessions court, submitting no fewer than four applications, but no forum has made a final decision on the issue over a decade and a half.

Anwar, who has spent nearly 19 years on death row, was arrested in 1993 with his brothers after an argument broke out during a gathering at their village. The next day, 10 people arrived at Anwar’s house and fight broke out in which three people were injured and one died a month later.

During his 24 years in Vehari jail, Anwar developed severe heart problems and in 2015, he suffered an attack that paralysed the left side of his body and severely compromised his mobility.

The petition was filed by Justice Project Pakistan, whose spokesperson Wassam Waheed said: “Anwar has been denied his rights under the country’s juvenile justice system for too long, without explanation. With Anwar’s case, the lack of retrospective force of the JJSO and the presidential notification is clear for all to see.”

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2017