After 22 years, Muahmmad Iqbal finally walks free

Muhammad Iqbal was only 17 years old in 1998 when he was arrested and consequently sentenced to death a year later.

In 2000, Pakistan passed the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO), making it illegal for juveniles to be handed the death sentence. A presidential notification of 2001 subsequently provided remission to all juveniles sentenced prior to the ordinance. However, Iqbal continued to languish on death row despite his proven juvenility. In fact, a letter written by the Punjab government to the Lahore High Court in 2003 listed Iqbal as one of the prisoners entitled to remission.

Over two decades later, the Lahore High Court has finally acknowledged that Iqbal was wronged and did not deserve to be on death row. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in February 2020 and Iqbal was released from jail on 30 June 2020 after it was established that he has already served a life term.

Case background

Iqbal was only 17 years old when he was sentenced to death in 1999 for fatally shooting a man. He has spent more than half his life on death row. The FIR states that Iqbal and four others surrounded a wagon near Mandi Bahauddin. Upon being surrounded, the driver of the vehicle reversed the car in an attempt to escape. As a reaction, shots were fired that smashed the windscreen, and injured the driver and three passengers. They were moved to a hospital, where one of the four injured parties succumbed to their injuries.

Iqbal was arrested two months after the incident that took place in 1998 and a Special Court judge in Gujranwala sentenced him to death a year later. Suspecting that he was a juvenile, the prosecution moved an application before the trial court to determine Iqbal’s age through an ossification test. It was subsequently determined that his age was 17 years at the time of the alleged offence. The trial court also held in its judgment that Iqbal was a minor at the time of the occurrence.

In fact, ossification tests were conducted on all five of the accused which determined three to be juveniles. All but Iqbal were given life sentences, including the ones found not to be juveniles. Iqbal remains the only accused on death row – despite his juvenility being recognized. The basis for his sentence is dubious eyewitness testimonies, made even more problematic by the fact that the offence took place at 12:30am, in a street with no lights.