A mentally ill prisoner who spent the last 16 years of his life on death row passed away in a Lahore hospital on Monday night, a rights outfit announced on Friday. According to a press statement issued by the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), 56-year-old Khizar Hayat passed away at Jinnah Hospital where he was admitted after he stopped taking food and medication. According to the JPP, Khizar Hayat was first diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by jail authorities in 2008. In 2017, the Lahore High Court (LHC) had stayed Hayat’s execution but rejected his mother’s appeal for a stay in December 2018. A district and sessions court in Lahore subsequently fixed Hayat’s execution for January 15, 2019, before it was suspended by the SC.

Source: Pakistan Today March 22, 2019 15:00 UTC