PESHAWAR, June 13: A condemned prisoner was executed in the central prison on Tuesday morning. Judicial magistrate Malik Amjad Raheem supervised the execution. Mutaber Khan was sentenced to death on five counts by a trial court in Swabi in 1998 and all his appeals were dismissed by superior courts. The efforts made by elders of his village, Tordher, for a compromise between him and the rival family had also failed.

Mutaber was shifted to the execution cell on May 20, a day before his date of execution. But the government stayed the execution for 15 days as compromise negotiations were going on with the rival family.

On June 5, he was communicated by a village elder that the rival family had agreed to forgive him in return of Rs1.3 million and some philanthropists had arranged the money for him.

However, the pardon proved to be only short-lived as the rival family backed out of the compromise.

In his last will, Mutaber requested the government to provide education to his younger brothers and sisters. He exhorted his siblings never to harm anybody and always try to serve humanity. He asked his family not to indulge in enmity with anybody.

The custom of ‘bride-price’ played a key role in Mutaber’s life.

Mutaber, whose school leaving certificate shows he was 16 at the time of offence, said he was in love with a girl living in his neighbourhood. When his family asked for her hand, her father, Khanzada, demanded Rs30,000 to accept the proposal.

In his confessional statement, Mutaber said when his family arranged the money and contacted her father, he informed them that he had accepted another proposal after getting Rs80,000 as bride-price.

Mutaber got angry and along with his companion, Taza Deen, attacked Khanzada’s house and axed to death his daughters — Mashooqa, Tajbaro and Mujahida — and his son, Shehzada.

Mutaber was arrested on April 15, 1996, and was sentenced to death by the trial court in Swabi on Oct 6, 1998.

He never presented himself as a juvenile offender before the trial court and the high court. When he finally did, the Supreme Court did not entertain it.

Mutaber contended that his date of birth in his school-leaving certificate, issued in 1990, was Feb 8, 1980. He said he was kept in the child section of the Swabi district prison as he was only 16 at the time of his arrest.

In 2002, she requested the Peshawar High Court’s chief justice to commute Mutaber’s death sentence to life imprisonment as he was not an adult at the time of the occurrence. The high court dismissed her plea in Feb 2003, observing that the case was closed now as the Supreme Court had also dismissed his appeal.