LAHORE – The Supreme Court of Pakistan has suspended the execution of a mentally ill former policeman sentenced to death in 2003 for killing a fellow officer.
According to a statement issued by the Supreme Court on Saturday, Chief Justice Saqib Nisar also ordered a new hearing in the case of Khizar Hayat, whose execution had been scheduled for Jan 15.
Hayat was first diagnosed with schizophrenia by prison authorities and a court-assigned medical board back in 2008 and in 2015.
The chief justice said on Saturday that Hayat’s case was an issue of human rights and needed to be heard urgently.
https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/headline/first-ever-death-penalty-for-blasphemy-on-social-media-in-pakistan/
Hayat, who is being imprisoned at the central jail in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat area, was sentenced to death in 2003 over the shooting of a fellow police officer. He has spent nearly 15 years on death row. He was first diagnosed as a schizophrenic in 2008 by jail medical authorities.
In 2010, the jail medical officer recommended that Hayat needed specialised treatment and should be shifted to the psychiatric facility. However, this was never done.
In 2017, the Lahore High Court had stayed the execution of Hayat.
On Monday, a two-judge panel comprising Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik and Justice Sardar Tariq Masoof will hear Hayat’s mother’s petition for his life.
Hayat’s mother, in a letter, has requested the chief justice to visit Kot Lakhpat jail’s ward for mentally ill prisoners and investigate what medicines were being given to her son.
She pleads that his medical records be investigated “to determine why his treatment was not being done properly and why his condition was worsening day by day”.
Justice Project Pakistan, which campaigns against the death sentence, welcomed the top court’s decision.
https://twitter.com/JusticeProject_/status/1084060444292247553
The JPP), which has been contesting the case, is also running a campaign on social media, asking President Arif Alvi to “grant mercy” to Hayat.
https://twitter.com/KhoosatSarmad/status/1084037687219245057
According to Article 45 of the Constitution, the president has the “power to grant pardon, reprieve and respite, and to remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority”.
