KARACHI: The top brass of the Pakistan Peoples Party, including the Sindh chief minister, visited the Karachi central prison on Friday to meet their colleague Syed Ali Nawaz Shah who was recently convicted of corruption by an accountability court.

The purpose of the rare visit to the prison by the CM and other important Pakistan Peoples Party leaders was to express solidarity with the jailed member of the provincial assembly, whose conviction in a 2001 accountability reference was termed “misuse of judicial process for political victimisation” by PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari.

Besides CM Qaim Ali Shah, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah, provincial ministers Nasir Shah, Mumtaz Jakhrani and others met the septuagenarian politician, who along with his nephew, Syed Imtiaz Ali Shah, and cousin, Syed Khadim Ali Shah, both ex-MPAs, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

While an official statement issued by CM House was silent about the provincial chief executive’s meeting with Ali Nawaz Shah, a spokesman for CM House told Dawn that the CM also met Mr Shah, a sitting MPA from PS-65 (Mirpurkhas), during his visit to the central prison because of his long association with him.

Sources said that the CM ordered the authorities concerned to provide improved facilities (A-Class) to the jailed politician. They said that the PPP leaders also held consultations regarding filing an appeal against his conviction before the Sindh High Court.

Mr Shah is an old guard of the PPP. He was first elected a member of the Sindh Assembly in 1970. He was the federal minister for industries in Benazir Bhutto’s first cabinet in 1988. He became a senator and returned to the Sindh Assembly thrice.

Meanwhile, according to the official statement, the CM during his visit to the central prison directed the authorities concerned to ensure foolproof security of all prisons in Sindh.

He said slackness in this regard would not be tolerated as security of prisons was an important component of the National Action Plan.

Accompanied by Sindh Home Secretary Mukhtiar Ahmed Soomro and others, Mr Shah went straight to the prison’s kitchen where he inspected and tasted the food being provided to inmates.

He also took a round of other facilities of jail — prisoner’s wards, society for advancement of health, education and environment for rehabilitation of prisoners, computer training and language centre and school of arts and music — where prisoners were being trained for different skills and their social and economic reformation.

The CM also directed the authorities that no leniency be given to the hardened criminals involved in terrorism, targeted killing, kidnapping, extortion and other heinous crimes.

He also stressed the need for strictly implementing the jail manual.

The chief minister announced remission of two months for the prisoners involved in minor offences.

He also asked the jail authorities to prepare and submit to him a list of those prisoners who had completed their sentences but were still in prison because of non-payment of fines against them. He said that the fines against such prisoners may be paid by the government to get them released.

Published in Dawn September 12th, 2015

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