Capital punishment: Second Haripur prison inmate to be executed

Likely to be sent to gallows at Adiala jail, Rawalpindi where he will be hanged.

HARIPUR: Shoaib Sarwar is likely to be moved to Adiala jail in Rawalpindi within the next 48 hours where he is expected to be hanged soon after, said insiders on Friday. A death warrant was issued and has been received by Central Prison Haripur authorities.

Shoaib has been incarcerated at Haripur jail since the past five years and is among 140 prisoners on death row. A resident of Wah Cantt and the son of Ghulam Sarwar, the inmate was prosecuted for murdering Awais Nawaz from the same area on January 21, 1996.

“Yes, we have received Shoaib’s death warrant from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa home department and as he is from Rawalpindi, he will be executed in his native district,” said an official of Haripur jail, requesting anonymity. The Haripur prison recently constructed its own gallows so it would execute the death penalty there.

According to insiders familiar with the matter, Shoaib will be shifted to Adiala jail within the next 48 hours and arrangements were being made to ensure he has one last meeting with his family.



A Rawalpindi district judge sentenced him to death in the first week of July, 1998.  His execution was put off with 8,500 other condemned prisoners across Pakistan following the moratorium by the Pakistan Peoples Party-led central government in 2008.

On September 6, 2014, Rawalpindi district and sessions judge Abdul Sattar issued a black warrant for Shoaib, asking Adiala jail authorities to execute him on September 18. However, a Rawalpindi bench of Lahore High Court placed a stay order on his death penalty two days prior to the day of execution. The order was based on the fact that Shoaib was part of a case against the death penalty pending with the apex court and that due to the moratorium, Shoaib had already spent 18 years—the equivalent of a life sentence—and so he should not be hanged till the case with the apex court was disposed.

The stay order was vacated, said Haripur jail authorities and the President of Pakistan turned down Shoaib’s mercy petition, leaving the previous order of the Rawalpindi district judge valid. The fresh warrant was received on Thursday through the K-P home department.

Shoaib will be the first convict of a non-terrorism related case and the second death row prisoner from Haripur jail to be hanged. Niaz Muhammad, a former junior Pakistan Air Force technician, was hanged in Peshawar in the early hours of January 1, 2015. He was sentenced to death in a terrorism case, convicted of attempting to attack former military ruler General (retd) Pervez Musharraf.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st, 2015.