June 09, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 04, 1429

RAWALPINDI, June 8: An inquiry report submitted by a magistrate to the district and sessions judge (DSJ) has found practice of illegal gratification prevalent in the Central Jail, Adiala under the nose of the jail superintendent and recommended strict action by the inspector general prisons.

The inquiry was ordered by the district and sessions judge in April on the complaint of a death convict, who alleged that he was brutally tortured in the jail, as he refused to pay the gratification to the jail authorities. The inquiry report was submitted to the judge in early May and was handed over to the complainant on June 7 by the office of the sessions judge.

Magistrate Mohammad Atta Rabbani was appointed as the judicial inquiry officer, after a torture complaint was filed by Mirza Mohammad Sarfaraz who was sentenced to death in 1993 for killing a man in Gujar Khan. His mercy petition is pending with the president.

Making superintendent, deputy superintendent and assistant superintendent as respondents, Sarfaraz through his legal counsel Raja Mohammad Zubair in his plea to the district and sessions judge had alleged that he was brutally tortured by the jail officials on February 29, apparently for not providing them gratification and not taking back a complaint filed in November last year against them with Saddar Bairooni police for torturing him. He accused that the deputy superintendent had also been hurling life threats to him for not cooperating with him.

The subsequent inquiry by the magistrate could not establish that the complainant was tortured as the six witnesses including prisoners, presented by Sarfaraz stated they only heard the hue and cry and did not see the jail authorities torturing the complainant.

The magistrate noted that the jail authorities might have used force to shift Sarfaraz to another cell apparently to maintain law and order in the prison, but no evidence could be found establishing the torture as alleged by the petitioner.