Fact-check: No, prisoner did not become a lawyer while on death row
Ayaz did complete his bachelor and master while incarcerated at Central Jail in Gujranwala, but he became an official lawyer after his release
Updated Monday Jan 09 2023
Facebook and Twitter posts claim that a convicted felon became a lawyer while serving time on death row, in a prison in Gujranwala, Punjab.
The claim is misleading.
Claim
On December 29, a Facebook user posted an image of a young man with the caption: “A prisoner in Gujranwala who after eight years became a lawyer.”
The user further adds that after the man was sentenced to death for murder, his family filed an appeal in the Lahore High Court against the decision, which took eight years to be decided.
“You may not believe this but Ayaz has come out of the jail as a lawyer,” the text read, “He completed his FA, BA, MA and then Bar while in prison.”
The post has received over 700 shares, at the time of writing.
A Facebook page titled, Law Students Commission Pakistan, has also shared the same post.
Fact
Muhammad Ayaz completed his bachelor's and master's while incarcerated at the Central Jail in Gujranwala, but he enrolled in a Bachelor of Law (LLB) programme after his release.
Ayaz told Geo Fact Check, over the phone, that he was convicted in 2010 for a murder in Gujranwala.
A district and session court handed down the death sentence to Ayaz and three others. The prisoners then filed an appeal against their conviction in the Lahore High Court.
While his appeal was pending in the Court, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2014 and a Master of Arts in 2016 from the University of Gujrat, all the while locked up in Cell No 7 at the Central Jail in Gujranwala.
Geo Fact Check has seen Ayaz’s educational certificates.
Ayaz, now aged 32, also spent four years in solitary confinement, but that did not deter him from continuing his education.
In 2017, Ayaz was acquitted. “Seven days after my release [from prison] I enrolled in a law program in Lahore,” he told Geo Fact Check.
As per the documents shared with Geo Fact Check, Ayaz obtained a Bachelor of Law (LLB) from the School of Law, affiliated with the University of Punjab, in 2020.
Ehtisham Goraya, the assistant administrator, at the School of Law in Lahore also confirmed to Geo Fact Check that Ayaz was enrolled in the college between 2017 and 2020.
He then passed his Law Graduate Assessment Test and enrolled with the Punjab Bar Council on September 13, 2021.
Asif Mahmood Randhawa, general secretary of the Gujranwala Bar Association, also confirmed to Geo Fact Check that Ayaz has been a member of the district bar association since 2021.
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