ISLAMABAD, April 24: Death-row prisoners are likely to get a reprieve with the government actively considering a proposal to convert the capital punishment into life imprisonment.

“A summary prepared by the interior ministry is at an advanced stage and a final decision is expected within a few days,” a source told Dawn on Thursday.

The source said that a major beneficiary of the new move would be condemned Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh who was convicted of carrying out four bomb blasts in Lahore and Multan which left 14 people dead.

His execution had been set for April 1 after the rejection of his appeals by courts and a mercy petition by the president. But later, President Musharraf delayed his execution for a month after receiving a fresh appeal from India.

Indian government and his family had separately filed clemency appeals with the Pakistan government.

Sarabjit’s wife Sukhpreet Kaur, daughters Swapandeep and Poonam and his sister and her husband Baldev Singh have been in Pakistan for the past few days to lobby government officials and politicians to help secure his release.

The proposal on commuting the death penalties to life sentences is lying with President Musharraf.

Certain parameters would be fixed to determine the eligibility of the cases for commutation in the death sentence.

Pakistan is ranked second in the world by Amnesty International for the number of convicts facing death. It has over 7000 prisoners on death row in different jails of the country.

Executions have increased over the years. Last year saw 134 executions, compared to 83 in 2006, 52 in 2005, 21 in 2004 and 18 in 2003.

Pakistan People’s Party has been traditionally soft on the issue of death sentences. Executions during two tenures of the PPP were rare. PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto had pardoned a number of convicts in 1988.

In 1970, the first PPP government led by late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto enhanced life sentence to 25 years from 14 years with an idea that the capital punishment would be abolished in years to come.

However, this could not materialise and the Gen Zia regime kept both the death penalty and the increased life sentence intact.