SC to hear schizophrenic convicts’ appeal

Five-judge larger bench will take up case on September 17 after gap of two years

ISLAMABAD:

A five-judge larger bench of the Supreme Court will resume hearing of the review petitions filed by two death row convicts suffering from schizophrenia against an earlier order of the apex court that declared that schizophrenia is not a permanent mental disorder.

The bench, headed by Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik, will take up on September 17 the appeals filed by mentally unstable prisoners – Imdad Ali and Kanizan Bibi.

Imdad Ali, from Burewala district of southern Punjab, was awarded death sentence in 2002 in a murder case. His sentence was upheld by all superior courts, including the Supreme Court. The president had also rejected his mercy petition.

However, when black warrants were issued for his execution on July 26, 2016, his wife, Safia Bano, filed a writ petition in the Lahore High Court (LHC) Multan bench to delay her husband’s hanging until his recovery from a mental illness. The high court rejected her plea on August 23, 2016.

She then approached the Supreme Court, claiming that her husband was insane and asking that the execution of his death sentence be delayed so that he could receive medical treatment which would enable him to write his will.

However, a three-member SC bench headed by former chief justice of Pakistan Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali on October 21, 2016 rejected her plea and held that a psychiatric disorder like schizophrenia did not subjugate the death sentence.

“In our opinion, rules relating to mental sickness are not subjugative to delay the execution of a death sentence which has been awarded to a convict,” the SC said in its 11-page judgment.

The Supreme Court noted that: “Schizophrenia is not a permanent mental disorder; rather, it is an imbalance which can increase or decrease depending on the level of stress”.

Later, the Punjab government and Ali’s wife challenged the SC’s order by filing review petitions.

In the meanwhile, Kanizan Bibi, who has been on the death row for 29 years and was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2000, also moved a review petition, using the insanity defense.

According to her petition, she was mute and at times she could not even feed or clothe herself. She rarely recognized or responded to family members.

The five-judge larger bench, presided by Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik, took up the review petitions almost two years back – on October 23, 2018 – and ordered a medical board consisting of civilian and military doctors to conduct fresh medical examinations of Imdad Ali and Kanizan Bibi.

The bench had asked the medical board to submit a report in two months detailing the history and extent of their illnesses and the prospects of their recovery. Ali and Bibi were respectively confined at the Vehari District Jail and the Punjab Institute of Mental Health (PIMH) in Lahore.

They were later shifted to the Rawalpindi Central Jail for examination by the medical board. According to sources, the medical commission submitted its report to the Supreme Court last year.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 15^th, 2020.