12 convicts hanged in different jails across Pakistan

At least 12 convicts, involved in different crimes, were hanged on Tuesday morning in different jails across Pakistan, local media reported.

Local Urdu Channel Capital TV, quoting officials, reported that 10 criminals were hanged in different jails of the eastern Punjab province and two faced gallows in Karachi, the provincial capital of southern Sindh province.

Three criminals were hanged in the jail of Jhang district, two each in Mianwali, Rawalpindi and Karachi districts, and one each in Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Multan, reports said.

A total of 14 criminals were scheduled to be hanged on Tuesday morning, but hanging processes of two convicts were halted after applicants forgave them at the last moment.

All the hanged convicts were involved in domestic violence and no terrorist was among them.

A number of criminals and terrorists have been hanged so far in Pakistan after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted a six-year long moratorium on the death penalties in December last year.

The decision to remove moratorium on the death penalties was taken after terrorists attacked at an army-run public school in the northwestern provincial capital of Peshawar in December 2014 that left over 150 people killed, including at least 134 children.

Initially, implementation of the maximum punishment was reinstated for terrorism-related cases, but later on it was applied on cases of all types of crimes.

Despite the reservations from European Union and human rights groups over the end of moratorium, the prime minister has directed the government's legal team to proactively pursue cases in courts so that trials could be completed and terrorists could be executed at the earliest. Endi