According to an Interior ministry spokesman of Pakistan, 12 male criminals were hanged at various jails in the country on Tuesday.

It is the biggest number of convicts executed on the same day after the unofficial moratorium on capital punishment was lifted in the month of December.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif had lifted a de facto moratorium on capital punishment on December 17, 2014. The decision came a day after Pakistani Taliban gunmen attacked a school, killing nine teachers and 132 students. The carnage had put pressure on the government of Pakistan to do more to deal with such militant groups.

Since then, 27 people have been hanged under capital punishment and most of them were militants. However last week it appeared that officials had broadened the policy that includes all convicts with death sentence whose appeals had not been accepted.

The ministry spokesman said, "They were not only terrorists, they included the other crimes, some of them were murderers and some did other heinous crimes."

The moratorium was placed on capital punishments since a democratic government took power from a military ruler in the year 2008.

However, according to the human rights groups many convictions in Pakistan are extremely unreliable. According to the rights officials, the archaic criminal justice system does not function properly and torture has often been put to use to get confessions and the police are rarely trained in carrying out investigation.

The government of Pakistan is going to execute Shafqat Hussain on Thursday. According to his lawyers, Shafqat was just 14 when he was detained by the police a decade ago on the charges of kidnap and murder of a kid. They added further his conviction was based on a confession that was taken by the police after nine days of torture.

There are over 8,000 convicts in Pakistan who have been given death sentence.