Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The top court has stayed over the death warrants of schizophrenic convict Imdad Ali that scheduled his execution to be held on November 2.

However, while staying the execution, the top court has issued the notices to prosecutor general and advocate general of Punjab and attorney general for Pakistan.

The stay was granted after his wife Safia Bano filed a review petition against the top court’s earlier judgment.

Earlier the top court observed and rules that the rules relating to mental illness are not subjugative to delay the execution of death sentence which has been awarded to the convict.

Safia Bano, wife of the convict, had moved a review petition against dismissal of her petition. The review petition said that the SC had relied upon the Indian’s court judgment, which was not applicable in Imdad’s case, adding that Indian courts sought to address as to whether a convict was suffering from any mental disorder.

“Stay for death execution petition may kindly be heard on an urgent basis on October 31 because if the application is not heard on the same day then the petition would become infructuous and the husband of the petitioner would be hanged on November 2 in the early morning,” Bano stated in her application.

Despite the pendency of review petition, a session court in Vehari issued the death warrant for Imdad Ali aged 50, who was awarded death penalty in 2001 over a shooting case.

Imdad, the convicted, has spent 14 years on death row along with 3 years in solitary confinement in jail hospital due to paranoid schizophrenia, a seriously debilitating mental illness which he was diagnosed with in 2013.

A three judge bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Anwar Zaheer Jamali heard the review appeal today. The case has been fixed for second week of November.