Daily Times

LAHORE: A division bench of the Lahore High Court on Thursday stayed execution of a ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ condemned prisoner, Khizar Hayat, 55, who were to taken to the gallows on January 17. The bench observed that it would be appropriate to wait for the decision by the Supreme Court in case of another mentally-ill condemned prisoner, Imdad Ali, to determine how to proceed in Khizar’s case. The bench suspended the black warrants issued by the district and sessions judge Lahore and directed the Home Department to submit a report until January 30 to a petition moved by Iqbal Bano, mother of Khizar. Counsel for petitioner Sarah Belal of the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) said that Khizar had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and executing him would violate local and international laws. She said that a petition against the execution of Hayat was already pending before the same bench wherein a reply from the Home Department had been sought but the jail authorities obtained black warrants of the prisoner. She said that the LHC previously had stayed the execution Khizar and formed a medical board to give report about his health. She said that the medical board had confirmed that Khizar was not fit for execution. She requested the court to suspend the death warrants and stay the execution. According to the details of Khizar’s case, complainant Muhammad Arif had lodged a case on October 21, 2001. He alleged that he along with his brother Ghulam Ghous was going back home when Khizar, who was enraged, intercepted them… saying he would take revenge from Ghous for insulting him in front of his friends and family over a monetary dispute. The convict then shot Ghous dead on the spot. An additional session judge on April 2, 2012 awarded death sentence to Khizar with a fine of Rs 100,000 to be paid to the legal heirs of the deceased.