Mother of paraplegic inmate on death row seeks pardon for her son

Abdul Basit has been on death row since 2009, however, his case has been getting pended for a long time due to the current state that he is in. Basit is a paraplegic and he lost control of both of his legs after contracting meningitis in prison back in 2010. He has been on wheelchair since then but currently the law does not excuse him from his punishment just because he is a cripple.

Abdul Basit was scheduled to be hanged in January this year, but his execution was halted on the directives of President Mamnoon Hussain. However, that stay has expired again and the date of the inmate’s execution looms closer.

Abdul Basit’s mother, Nusrat Parveen is again urging the president to pardon her son from the punishment and relieve him of his misery. She met Basit at a prison in Faisalabad and said that she was shocked to see how much weight her son had lost.

“I wept and cried on seeing him in fragile health,” she said. “My son is like a dead man already, do they want to hang a dead man?”

Basit, 43, was convicted of murdering a man during a financial dispute. He was found guilty during the hearing as the evidence clearly pointed out to his involvement in the murder.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that Basit’s execution must comply with the country’s prison rules governing execution procedures. However, there is no provision for the hanging of paraplegic people in those rules.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=52790

Posted by fatimaarshad on Apr 26 2016. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.