ISLAMABAD: The 30-day stay of execution granted to death row prisoner Shafgat Hussain is set to expire on Friday.

However, an executive inquiry to verify his age is expected to make its findings public this week and sources privy to the investigation tell Dawn that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) team probing the case is in possession of new evidence that may put the matter to rest once and for all.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry told Dawn on Thursday that the inquiry into Shafgat Hussain`s age was `in its final stages` and its report would be made public soon.

Another official linked to the inquiry told Dawn in an off-therecord conversation that the report had been sent to the concerned authority, which would make it public when it deemed fit. However, he refrained from commenting on the substance of the report.

Following extensive media coverage of the case, Shafgat`s cause was tal
Valerie Khan, a human rights activist and a member of the Child Rights Movement (CRM), told Dawn on Thursday that civil society members had learned from authorities in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) that the birth certificate obtained by Shafgat`s family in December last year from the AJK local government department and laid before the executive inquiry and the media by his legal team had been cancelled.

Ms Khan, who specialises in child protection matters and has examined Shafgat`s case extensively, said that this was because the team probing the case had obtained Shafgat`s school record during the course of the inquiry. The school in question is the Government Primary School, Kel Kala Lot, located in the Athmuqam area of AJK, which Shafgat attended as a child.

In the school record, a copy of which was provided to Dawn by a civil society organisation working on the case, Shafgat Hussain`s date of birth is recorded as Aug 20, 1986. While this contradicts the earlier birth certificate, which had put Shafgat`s age at the time of his arrest at around 14, it still means that he was under 18 years of age at the time of sentencing.

Shafgat was arrested and sentenced to death in 2004 for the kidnapping and involuntary murder of a seven-year-old boy, who lived in a Karachi apartment building where he worked as a security guard. All courts in the land had turned down his appeals and the Supreme Court threw out a review petition that was the first to raise the matter of Shafgat`s juvenility at the time of arrest, maintaining that this line of defence should have been introduced at the trial court level.

His current legal team, however, insists that Shafgat`s earlier defence attorneys did not plead his case competently, which was why this aspect was overlooked in the past. Just over a month ago, before Shafgat was scheduled to be executed, he was granted a last-minute reprieve and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had ordered an inquiry into the matter, which was tasked with establishing the veracity of the lawyers` contention that Shafgat was a minor at the time of sentencing.

The case also garnered a lot of attention on social and mainstream media and became a bone of contention between supporters and opponents of the death penalty.

Tariq Nagash adds from Muzaffarabad: A police of ficial in the town of Kel confirmed that two FIA teams had visited the area in March to check the record of a seminary and a school where Shafgat had studied before leaving for Karachi.

`The teams took records from the madressah, the primary school as well as the local government office that had issued Shafgat`s birth certificate in Dec last year,` local police official Tufail Malik said.

`They promised they would return the record, but it has not been sent bacl< yet,` he added.