Pakistan: Shafqat's execution stayed for 72 hours

His hanging was scheduled to take place on Thursday.

Conforming the move, Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon tweeted: "Thanks GOD . Just received letter regarding shafqat Hussain . It is postponed for 72 hours."

Human rights group Reprieve welcomed the order.

Maya Foa, Director of Reprieve’s death penalty team, said in the group's website: "This decision to stay the execution of a man tortured into ‘confessing’ to a crime when he was merely a child is hugely welcome. It is, however, a shame that it took an outcry and the weight of civil society to push the Minister into doing the right thing – just hours before Shafqat was due to be led to the gallows."

Foa said: "There are likely to be hundreds more Shafqats on Pakistan’s death row but the Interior Ministry has no idea at the moment who they are. Minister Nisar must at last conduct the full and proper inquiry into Shafqat’s case that was initially promised, and stay all other impending executions while he works out how many of those people may have been tortured into ‘confessing’ to crimes when they were children.”

The group said: "Shafqat was a 14-year-old boy when he was illegally sentenced to death. He was brutally tortured and made a false confession to make the abuse stop. The Pakistani authorities tried to execute him in January 2015, but the hanging was called off following our campaign to save Shafqat’s life."

"Shafqat was wrongfully convicted of murder and kidnap in 2004. The only evidence against him was a forced confession made after nine days of severe torture," it said.

Shafqat was sentenced to death on charges of kidnapping and killing a seven-year-old boy in Pakistan's Karachi city in 2004, reports said.