Kathmandu. The judge who had previously issued the death sentence of the former Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf for treason, has died of COVID-19. The Peshawar High Court Chief Justice, Waqar Ahmed Seth has died at the age of 59 as reported by the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn on Thursday.

Judge Seth of Dera Ismail Khan (DI Khan) district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province has a wife and daughter in his family. On October 22, he was found to be infected with coronavirus and was admitted to a hospital in Peshawar. Soon after, he was shifted to Kulsum International Hospital, a private hospital in Islamabad. Judge Seth was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court in June 2018.

In December 2019, he chaired a special session and sentenced former President General Musharraf to death in absentia for imposing emergency in the country on November 3, 2007. The Lahore High Court, later overturned the decision in 2020, after it stated that the legal procedure though which the General was found guilty for high treason was “unconstitutional.”

Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan from 1999 to 2008, was a former army chief who had overthrown the then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. He went to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (the UAE) from Pakistan in 2016 for medical treatment and has been living there. He has not returned to Pakistan since then.