LAHORE (Web Desk) – The planned hanging of a paraplegic prisoner in Lahore has been delayed, his lawyer told BBC.
Abdul Basit could not be hanged in compliance with the jail manual because he is in a wheelchair, a magistrate said when ordering the postponement.
Pakistan’s prison guidelines require that a prisoner stand on the gallows.
Rights groups say hanging Basit would constitute cruel and degrading treatment, and that there is a risk of the hanging going wrong, reported BBC.
Abdul Basit, 43, is paralysed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair after becoming ill in prison.
Pakistan reintroduced the death penalty in December 2014 and has hanged 239 people since.
Basit was convicted six years ago of murder and was to have been hanged in Lahore last month – but that was postponed.
A court then ordered the jail authorities to go ahead with the hanging, even though his mercy petition filed on 22 July before the president is still pending. Both the Supreme Court and the Lahore High Court have given their consent to the execution.
