ISLAMABAD: The Sup­reme Court has declared that a murder convict, who spent 28 years behind bars amid rejection of his appeals in all lower and superior courts, was a juvenile at the time of the commission of offence and thus entitled to benefit from a 2001 presidential ordinance regarding special remission in death sentence.

While expressing concern that the determination of juvenility of Mohammad Anwar remained in limbo over the past 12 years, the apex court set aside the judgements of a sessions court as well as the Lahore High Court (LHC) in the 1993 murder case.

In a detailed judgement, however, a three-judge SC bench comprising Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Amin-ud-Din Khan upheld the charges under Section 324 (attempted murder) and 337-D (causing hurt) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The teenage Anwar was arrested on March 23, 1993 for the crime he committed on March 6, 1993. He was sentenced to death by a sessions court in 1998 for murder. He spent nearly two decades in death cell but did not give up hope as he sought justice by approaching courts one after another to prove his juvenility at the time of commission of offence.

The three-member bench of the apex court preferred to take up the issue on the basis of the material available on record and finally decided the matter on March 22, 2021. The court was not inclined to refer the matter back to the additional sessions judge concerned to resolve the controversy regarding his juvenility, considering that the convict had already been behind bars for 28 years and the matter regarding his claim of juvenility at the time of occurrence had remained pending for 12 years.

Authored by Justice Malik, the verdict regretted that the matter of his juvenility could not be decided by the courts for one or the other technical reasons.

The bench recalled how Anwar was convicted by the additional sessions judge, Vehari, on June 27, 1998 under Section 302(b) of the PPC. The LHC Multan bench dismissed his appeal on July 25, 2001, maintaining the conviction and death sentence. He then filed a petition before the SC that dismissed it on Oct 11, 2007, also maintaining his death sentence. The convict later filed a review petition that also was dismissed for ‘not being pressed by him’.

Earlier on Dec 13, 2001, the interior ministry notified a Presidential Order (PO) for grant of special remissions in the death sentence of those condemned prisoners who were juvenile as defined in the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 at the time of the commission of offence and thus stood commuted to life imprisonment provided that the death sentence had been awarded under Tazir and not Qisas or any other Hudood Laws.

On the strength of the PO, the convict then approached the Punjab home secretary for conversion of his death sentence into life imprisonment on the ground that when he committed the crime i.e. March 6, 1993, he was below the age of 18 years and therefore could not be sentenced to death for being juvenile at the time of the offence.

When his representation was not decided, he moved an application before the sessions judge in Vehari. It was rejected on July 1, 2009. Later, he preferred a writ petition which was also disposed of on May 5, 2015 with a direction to the Punjab home department to decide the representation by May 8, 2015 and submit a report for perusal of the judge in the LHC chambers.

The home department, however, replied that in the 2003 Ziaullah versus Najeebullah case, the SC had to determine the question of juvenility of a convict. Consequently, the convict again approached the sessions judge, Vehari, but his plea was again dismissed on June 29, 2015 on the ground that no case was pending before the court.

He again challenged the order of the sessions judge before the LHC which was disposed of with a direction to the sessions judge to decide the matter. The sessions judge, however, again rejected the petition stating that no representation of the convict was pending before the home department claiming juvenility and since his death sentence had been confirmed by the Supreme Court therefore the issue of juvenility could not be determined. He again challenged the order before the LHC that rejected it on Feb 11, 2015 with the observation that the high court was left with no jurisdiction to reopen the past and closed matter in constitutionality jurisdiction as the Supreme Court had refused to commute the sentence.

He once again approached the SC which converted his petition into appeal and set aside the judgments of the sessions court as well as the high court and after relying on a number of documents declared that Anwar was a juvenile at the time of commission of offence within the meaning of Section 7 of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 and thus entitled to the benefit of the Dec 13, 2001 PO. The court, however, upheld the charges under Section 324 and 337-D of the PPC.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2021