Is it just us or is October really the month of horror that goes beyond Halloween? For an inmate on death row, every day might feel like the next jump scare is just around the corner. What we do know is that approximately four years ago, Justice Project Pakistan collaborated with director, writer and actor Sarmad Khoosat for No Time to Sleep, depicting the life of Prisoner Z in the last 24 hours of his life. The man depicting Prisoner Z was Sarmad Khoosat and the stream was without edits and any cuts. Watching it makes you wonder what kind of justice system we follow, if it makes you feel hurt by, angry at, and dread the machinery behind it.

Now – in the present – as the debate (or lack thereof in the corridors of power) over the question of the death penalty looms as a reality in Pakistan, Justice Project Pakistan in commemoration of World Day Against the Death Penalty (on October 10) presented a play titled Limbo.

A collaboration between JPP and Olomopolo Media, it was staged at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA) in Islamabad and was conceptualized by Kanwal Khoosat, directed by Talhah Mufti with sound design by Agha Haider.

The play, Limbo, entailed performers reading letters written by incarcerated prisoners on death row. An illustrious cast came together for this gut-wrenching real-to-stage theatre production which included Sarmad Khoosat, Samiya Mumtaz, Erfan Khoosat, and Hassan Wajid Baig.

The letters from incarcerated inmates were, according to a press statement, interspersed with “passages from George Orwell’s essay, A Hanging, and regulations from the Pakistan Prisons Rules.”

The theatre production was a reflection of the dysfunction within Pakistan’s justice system such as “torture, false confessions, juvenile detention – as well as shine a light on the humanity of those behind bars.”

The collaboration - between JPP and Olomopolo Media - was meant to highlight important issues pertaining to crime and punishment.

As Kanwal Khoosat (Executive Director of Olomopolo) noted, Limbo was about “showcasing narratives that society forgets, those that society wishes it did not have to remember or acknowledge.”

“This year, the theme of the WDADP is torture – a theme that has particular resonance for our country since a significant number of death row prisoners have been sentenced to death on the basis of evidence extracted under torture. The heartbreaking stories of our clients in Limbo highlight the urgent need to reform Pakistan’s criminal justice system. We also implore our lawmakers to legislate criminalizing torture so that some of the stories you hear during this performance don’t ever have to be repeated,” stated Sarah Belal, Executive Director, JPP.

The power of the government to execute its people is not a common global practice, with at least 108 countries having abolished the death penalty for all crimes in 2020 by statistics from Amnesty International.

What are we waiting for to do away with this punishment, is a much more complex question than the crime itself might have been. In the end, we can only hope such efforts bring about intelligent conversation on how to move forward as a country. But perhaps the answer lies in acknowledging that there is no such thing as a born criminal.