ISLAMABAD: The government plans to introduce a bill in parliament which will convert death penalty into life imprisonment, informed sources told Dawn on Friday.

The bill is likely to be tabled in the coming session of the National Assembly.

The sources said that President Asif Ali Zardari was taking keen interest on the issue and wanted to see the conversion of capital punishment into life imprisonment before the end of the PPP government in March 2013.

“A recent party meeting decided in principle to go ahead with the bill,” a source said, adding that its coalition partners had also been taken into confidence over the issue.

President’s spokesman Farhatullah Babar said: “The government is considering converting death sentence into life imprisonment and is taking appropriate legislative measures for the purpose.”

He said the prime minister had constituted a committee comprising minister for interior, minister for law, attorney general and representatives of provincial governments to make recommendations.

When contacted, Attorney General Irfan Qadir the committee had not yet presented its recommendations to the government.

The law of capital punishment in Pakistan is believed to be one of the hurdles in the way of signing extradition treaties with counties where there is no law for death penalty. The United Kingdom is one such country.

The sources said Pakistan and United Kingdom were quite close to signing an extradition treaty last year but the law of death penalty in Pakistan blocked the process.

The sources said that because of non-abolition of capital punishment and absence of extradition treaties, hundreds of Pakistanis were languishing in jails in different countries.

On Dec 18, 2007, Pakistan had voted against a resolution on a moratorium on the death penalty in the UN General Assembly.