May 13, 2008	Tuesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 7, 1429

GUJRANWALA, May 12: The central jail here is overcrowded three times more than its capacity and 4,268 prisoners, including women and their children and juveniles, are incarcerated in the jail having capacity of 922 inmates and they are facing a great deal of inconvenience owing to a lack of basic facilities permissible under the jail manual.

This was stated by the members of a Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) delegation while speaking at a briefing after visiting the jail here on Monday. HRCP district coordinator M. Saeed Awan led the delegation.

They pointed out that most of the prisoners in juvenile barrack were underage boys involved in dacoities, robberies, narcotics and other crimes.

They belonged to poor and illiterate families who were unable to pursue their cases in courts mainly because of their poverty. The jail hospital was also not equipped with basic medical facilities, they said and added that there was acute shortage of beds and they saw two prisoner patients sharing a single bed.

Jail Superintendent Kamran Anjum informed the delegation that many captives were being shifted here from Hafizabad district as no jail had been constructed there.

He said construction of jail in Hafizabad could improve conditions in central jail here. Similarly, captives belonging to other districts should also be shifted from here to reduce congestion.

The delegation sent recommendation to the government for the construction of more barracks in central jail besides constructing a separate jail in Hafizabad.

FIA: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested as many as 24 people from Islamabad airport who were deported by the Turkish government on Monday. The FIA also received the body of a youth who died during crossing the Turkish border.

FIA additional director Hussain Asgher said that these deportees belonged to Gujrat, Sialkot and Kharian and had been trapped by human agents who lured them to send them Greece through Iran and Turkey after extorting heavy sums of money.

The FIA additional director said that Imran, 23, of Galiana village in Kharian tehsil, was among those people who slipped from a mountain in Turkey while infiltrating and later died in a hospital. He said that a case had been registered against human agents for enticing people to travel illegally.