KARACHI: Prisoners live in miserable conditions in Central Jail
By Maisoon Husein
KARACHI, Oct 24: ‘‘Night time is torture,” says a prisoner interviewed near the judicial lock-up. Prisoners have to lie sideways, tightly wedged. This work is accomplished by the Muqaddams, who use their feet to push the prisoners against each other so that not an inch of space is wasted. If prisoners get up at night to answer the call of nature, they invariably lose even this little space.
The presence of some 5000 prisoners in the jail, about five times the prison’s capacity of 1000, is causing many problems. For one, almost every prisoner is infected with scabies. The prison has no medicine to treat the prisoners. The Alamgir Trust is providing some medicines, but it is not sufficient.
At least 40 patients with TB have been identified. Only about half are in the prison hospital. Here, a number of them are forced to lie on bedding on the ground because of the shortage of beds. They are not under “DOTS treatment” , the most effective treatment for TB, but instead get “one red pill a day” given again by the Alamgir Trust. Only a study can tell how many are afflicted with chronic, untreatable TB and are likely to spread this to others in close contact.
The prison is unable to provide a special diet to patients. “Zardari has made arrangements to give hospital patients one egg daily and qeema four times a week,” according to a political prisoner contacted in late September.
He mentioned three prisoners who needed immediate hospitalization and surgery. Asghar Ali Shah, a political prisoner with hernia is not being taken to a hospital outside the prison because of earlier attempts to escape. Shahid Nazir Ahmed and Agha Ahmad required surgery (at the time of writing) to extract the embedded bullets. One reason for this was lack of security, “but they could easily be treated at Shifa Hospital which has expertise and security if the Home Department gives permission” he said.
To take patients for treatment in any city hospital the jail depends upon the Edhi ambulance as it has no ambulance of its own.
Yet another prisoner who demands immediate attention is a 95-year-old who, according to him, was put behind bars some three years ago on a “murder charge” because of “family enmity”. With his family in Sukkur, no one visits him in Karachi, and he longs to transferred.
The food in central jail is chiefly dal roti, the prisoners’ diet list in the jail rules is not being followed because of shortage of funds. According to a lawyer, the central jail Karachi is receiving Rs 8 for food per prisoner per day, while prisons in the interior, Punjab and Balochistan are able to provide relatively better diet.
Besides attention to these basic problems, one measure that could somewhat ease the harsh treatment towards prisoners is by increasing the jail staff. “At present, the staff provision is for 1000 prisoners. Given the fact that there are five times the number of prisoners causes the staff to be tense and short tempered.”
Yet another proposal made by the jail officials is that the jail police be given the same grade and pay as the city police.
Lack of monitoring of the prison by judicial magistrates and other independent authorities encourages corruption, including child sexual abuse. The victims are juveniles and adults under 20 ,transferred from the Youthful Offenders Industrial School and the Landhi prison. “Some moneyed prisoners are guilty of this offence,” said a political prisoner.
It is unfortunate that despite such goings-on, a visitors’ committee has not been set up to pay frequent visits to the central jail, to record prisoners’ complaints and bring these to the notice of the higher authorities.
