Human rights organisation Amnesty International on Monday requested the government of Pakistan to halt the scheduled execution of a paraplegic man, who is due to be hanged tomorrow, according to a statement released.

Abdul Basit, a 43-year-old man, was convicted of murder in 2009, but has always maintained his innocence.

“Instead of debating the logistics of how to put a man in a wheelchair to death, the authorities in Pakistan should grant reprieve to Abdul Basit,” said Sultana Noon, Amnesty International’s Pakistan Researcher.

“This case has once again drawn widespread attention to the cruelty of the relentless conveyer belt of executions in Pakistan,” said the statement from Amnesty International.

The statement further added that at least 240 people have been put to death since December 2014 – a staggeringly high number that makes Pakistan one of the top three executing countries in the world.

Amnesty International also requested the government of Pakistan to immediately impose a moratorium on executions with a view to the full abolition of the death penalty, according to the statement released today.

According to Amnesty’s statement, Abdul Basit became paralysed in 2010 due to the inhumane conditions in which he was kept in Central Jail Faisalabad, and was not given sufficient healthcare after being diagnosed with tuberculosis meningitis, leading to severe spinal cord damage.

A report published in The Independent in August had thrown light on the issue.

Human rights campaigning group Reprieve had referred to this conviction as "cruel and violent spectacle."

His execution was about to take place after the court ordered a warrant on July 29, but his execution got temporarily suspended.

The counsel for Basit had pointed out that Pakistan’s law had provisions for mercy to be granted in cases where prisoners were suffering from severe “ill-health”.

Read: Disabled death row convict set to be hanged

The government’s failure to acknowledge this and commute Basit’s sentence appeared to form part of a worrying trend involving the blanket dismissal of all mercy petitions considered since executions resumed in 2014, he had said before the court.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dainius Puras, had also voiced concern over the medical condition of Basit.

“We call on the authorities of Pakistan to protect the right to health of Abdul Basit and Khizar Hayat, and other inmates in death row with severe psychosocial disabilities,” he said earlier.

Abdul Basit's lawyer, from the Justice Project Pakistan, had said that hanging a man of his condition is against the law and since they won't be able to determine the correct length of rope which is needed to hang him, hanging him with a rope of an inaccurate length would give him an "appalling death".

His lawyer also claimed that his execution "would amount to a cruel and unusual punishment, breaching Pakistani and international law".

Telegraph reports showed that Faisalabad Central Jail's handbook specifies rules and regulations which include that a prisoner must be able to stand on his own before he could be hanged.

The federal government had lifted the moratorium on the death penalty on Dec 17, 2014, in terrorism related cases only, in the wake of a Taliban attack at the Army Public School in Peshawar, which claimed 150 lives, most of them children.

Later, the government completely reinstated capital punishment for all offences that entail the death penalty.