LAHORE, Jan 13: The Federal Shariat Court has amended the Prison Rules by fixing a period of seven days for the filing of appeals by convicts, declaring that no person sentenced by a court of law in jail shall remain unattended.

Comprising Justice Saeedur Rehman Farrukh and Justice Zafar Pasha Chaudhry, the FSC division bench has communicated the decision to all the inspectors-general of prisons in the country placing them under a constitutional and legal obligation to ensure that appeals of all the convicts are moved to the competent appellate forum.

The court observed that filing of an appeal by a convict was a right ordained by Article 9 of the constitution and it was also provided under Rule 90 of the Prison Rules framed under the Prisons Act of 1894.

The legal provision was cited by assistant advocate-general Raja Abdur Rehman, who submitted that the possibility of many more convicts not filing appeals due to lack of knowledge could not be ruled out. He submitted that jail superintendents were legally bound to furnish convicts with such an information.

The AAG also cited the rule and the provision of the CrPC. However, he submitted that the rule only stipulated that the jail superintendent would inform a convict, soon after he or she landed in the prison, about the right to appeal. And if a convict desired to move the appeal, the superintendent would facilitate the process.

Another change in the rule was that the superintendent shall inform in writing the appellate court within seven days if the convict did not want to prefer an appeal.

The change in the rule has come in the backdrop of recovery of a missing appeal of co-accused Rafaqat Ali, a resident of Jahanian. He was sentenced to 20-year imprisonment in a case of sodomy under the Hudood Ordinance, 1979. Muhammad Akhtar, who was sentenced to 10-year in prison in the same case, filed the appeal. Both are now lodged at the Khanewal district jail.