Life sentence means life imprisonment, not 25-year jail: CJP

ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice (CJ) Asif Saeed Khan Khosa on Monday observed that life sentence does not mean 25-year imprisonment; rather, it means life imprisonment. He remarked that he would further explain the meaning of life sentence at an appropriate time.

A three-member bench also comprising Justice Sardar Tariq Masood and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed dismissed the review application of Abdul Qayyum and upheld his death sentence. He has been convicted of killing a man during a robbery. A trial court and high court had sentenced him to death as well.

After explanation, convicts will prefer a death sentence instead of life imprisonment, the CJ said while maintaining the earlier ruling of the court of giving a death sentence to a convict in a murder case.

“If this is the case then we would see who commits murder,” he said while referring to judicial practice in India that life sentences are given with period of imprisonment. A life sentence means that a person will have to live in prison for as long as that person is alive, he said. If people understood its real meaning then they would file applications seeking the death sentence instead, he said.

In 2001 Ali Sher Abdul Waheed and Qayyum stole a car from a man named Mirdad and ran away. Mirdad hung onto the car to stop them. The convicts opened fire at him and he was killed. In 2018, the Supreme Court had converted the sentence of Waheed into a life sentence. Qayyum had filed a review application seeking the same.