CJP stays execution of mentally ill person, seeks report

LAHORE: Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar on Saturday took notice of issuance of death warrants for a mentally ill prisoner, stayed his execution and directed the government to furnish a report regarding his mental health condition.

While hearing public interest cases at the Lahore registry, the CJ said he read in an English-language daily that a schizophrenic prisoner, Khizar Hayat, was going to the executed.

A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court will take up an appeal of Hayat’s mother on Monday for suspension of his execution.

When asked, an additional advocate general said Khizar Hayat was imprisoned at Central Jail Kot Lakhpat. The chief justice directed the law officer to verify whether the condemned prisoner was mentally ill. The CJ observed that the matter involved basic human rights and needed to be heard on urgent basis.

A district & sessions judge in Lahore had issued death warrants for Hayat and set Jan 15 for his execution at Kot Lakhpat jail.

Sentenced to death in 2003 over a shooting of a fellow police officer, Hayat has spent nearly 15 years on death row. Hayat was first diagnosed as a schizophrenic patient in 2008 by the jail medical authorities. He suffers from delusions and has to be heavily medicated.

In 2010, the jail medical officer had also recommended that Hayat needed specialised treatment and should be shifted to the psychiatric facility. However, this was never done. Previously, the Lahore High Court had, in 2017, stayed the execution of Hayat.

Meanwhile, a two-judge bench comprising Justice Mansoor Ahmad Malik and Justice Sardar Tariq Masood will hear on Jan 14 the appeal moved by Hayat’s mother.

The appeal also challenged a 2018 judgment by a Lahore High Court division bench, besides seeking a stay against the execution of Hayat. It said the judgment passed by the division bench was not in accordance with the law and the prisons rules. It said the bench mixed the conviction with execution and, thereby, dismissed the petition on wrong premise.

It stated that the bench had not appreciated the extensive medical history of the appellant’s son as well as the reports of the medical boards, establishing the mental ailment of Hayat.

The appeal argued that a condemned prisoner could not be executed in utter disregard of the prisons rules on the subject. It pleaded that the government had a legal duty under the Prisons Rules 1978 to provide the appellant’s son with adequate and appropriate treatment for his mental illness at a psychiatric facility. To deny him the treatment was an arbitrary abuse of powers and a violation of Articles 9, 14 and 25 of the Constitution, added the appeal.