It is a shabby two-room spot, ignoring Chehla Bandi neighborhood which is along the Neelum Valley street. As I and a far off cousin of Shafqat achieve near to the tin-roofed structure, we see an elderly lady remaining in the patio looking forlorn and dispossessed. From behind shows up a young lady in her mid-twenties yet looks much more seasoned. Inside in a room is lying an outwardly tested and hearing-disabled old man. From a nearby room a young person, putting on a denim coat, surges out to get us.
They are Shafqat's relatives: his guardians and two of his six kin. They have been inhabiting this spot for a month to month rent of Rs2,500 for as long as three weeks, taking after the savage assault on the Army Public School in Peshawar when they were informed that Shafqat could be hanged whenever as Pakistan had lifted a six-year ban on executions.
The family fits in with Kalalot, a little village of less than 300 houses close to the town of Kel, in the upper cinch of the Neelum Valley, almost 190 kilometers north-east of Muzaffarabad. Cultivating and steers raising used to be their method for work, in a standout amongst the most underprivileged regions of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, yet now they have no intends to procure their living.
The greater part of their property and dairy cattle have been sold to meet set out costs to and from Karachi over the previous decade, after Shafqat was captured in 2004 for capturing and murdering a seven-year-old kid from a condo assembling in Karachi where he was functioning as a gatekeeper. In September that year, Shafqat, said to be 14 years of age at the time, was sentenced to death by an antiterrorism court. His homicide allegation was diminished to 'automatic murder' on advance, yet the terrorism charges against him were not suppressed.
"We came to think about his capture and conviction much later, in light of the fact that in those days there were poor method for correspondence in our general vicinity," reviews Manzoor, Shafqat's senior sibling.
At first, the family acquired some cash from a relative and sent Gulzaman, the eldest kin to Karachi. He met Shafqat in jail and returned home following one month, with news about his conviction. "At the point when Gulzaman asked Shafqat what he had done, he begun shouting. Such was the effect of police torment on him," Manzoor includes.
As indicated by Justice Project Pakistan, a law office having some expertise in human rights cases and speaking to Shafqat in courts, Shafqat admitted strictly when being tormented by police amid nine days of investigation. In an announcement, the UK-based human rights association Reprieve additionally said that Pakistani police had tormented the adolescent into admitting to the wrongdoing.
"In Pakistan, police torment can drive you into admitting any homicide, even that of the first PM of Pakistan, regardless of the possibility that you're not conceived at the time," says Raza Ali Khan, a senior promoter in Muzaffarabad.
With his guardians and sister situated close by him, Manzoor reviews how the punishment has crushed their lives. "My dad is incapacitated. He can't hear and see appropriately. Following the time when my mom learnt that Shafqat was sentenced to death, she has been exasperates rationally, enduring from amnesia."
Shafqat's mom is holding the main picture of her detained child and tears begin moving down her cheeks when I approach her. As I attempt to take a picture, Manzoor asks her not to cry. She over and over wipes her face. The scenes are sad.
An antiterrorism court in Sindh issued Shafqat's passing warrant on Jan 3 and he was to be executed on Jan 14. His family was supporting for the most noticeably bad, yet then came the uplifting news: the inside service stopped his execution 'for now'. On Jan 5, elected Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan reported the administration was stopping his approaching execution. After two days, the clergyman said a choice in regards to Shafqat's age must be made for which a DNA test would be directed.
By and by, the family's experience is not over. "Unless an acceptable and definite choice comes, we will stay on tenterhooks," Manzoor muses. "Yet we are fulfilled that he is not an executioner or a terrorist."
He calls attention to that Shafqat has effectively used over 10 years in jail, which is identical to a lifelong incarceration, and contends that this ought to suffice for his discharge.
While sitting there, I likewise talk via telephone to Gulzaman, who has been in Karachi since 2004 to stay near to his sibling, doing odd occupations to meet costs. "I met Shafqat six days prior. He is confident that Allah will end his bind," he says.
"We don't need anything. When he is brought together with us, we will come back to our town. We won't stay in the urban communities for a solitary day," says Manzoor.
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