KARACHI:
As questions arise in media about the age of death-row prisoner Shafqat Hussain, officials insisted on Saturday that the inmate was 23 years old when he was incarcerated.
Citing the admissions register of the Karachi Central Jail, which records the age of every incoming inmate, they said Shafqat’s age was 23 when he was brought to the prison in 2004. “We record the age by our findings and by asking the prisoner. According to our register, he was not 14 but 23,” said one official.
Another prison official said there is a ‘huge difference’ between an inmate who is 14 years old and another who is 23 years old. “If he was 14, we would have sent him to the juvenile jail. Why would we keep him in the main jail?”
said the official. Shafqat’s family and lawyers have disputed the prison record. They claim he was 14 years old when he was sentenced to death by an anti-terrorism court for kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old who went missing from the apartments where the convict worked.
The murder provision was later reduced to involuntary manslaughter and he was sentenced to death for kidnapping. Shafqat’s lawyers claim he was forced into confessing his role in the crime after suffering torture at the hands of the police.
The government has halted his execution for 30 days on demand of the civil society, while his family and lawyers called for reinvestigation of the case to determine his age and his juvenility at the time of the offence.