PESHAWAR, June 8: About 200 convicts in different prisons of NWFP have requested human rights bodies to help them in getting remission for the period when they were under trial prisoners.

They have also requested the Supreme Court to adopt lenient view towards them in the cases pending before it in the same connection.

These prisoners claimed that previously the convicts were allowed remission for the period when they were under-trial, but following a judgment of the Peshawar High Court pronounced in May last year, now they have been denied that facility.

Through that judgment the high court had ruled that remissions could not be allowed to under-trial prisoners under section 382-B of the Criminal Procedure Code. The said the section deals with inclusion of the period of detention of an under trial prisoner in his or her prison term after their conviction.

The high court had delivered the verdict in a habeas corpus petition of a former additional secretary of physical planning and housing department, Akber Khan Marwat, on May 17, 2002. Appeal against that judgment has been pending before the Supreme Court since last year.

Most of these 200 prisoners are imprisoned at D.I.Khan, Haripur and other prisons. They have sent letters to different organizations including Voice of Prisoners, a body dealing with cases of destitute women, children and prisoners.

These prisoners claimed that it took a lot of time to decide a case by the trial court. They asked why should the prisoners suffer for the delay in decision of the cases.

The applicants claimed that the Prison Rules of 1894 were outdated and should be amended keeping in view the present realities.

They added that with the passage of time new laws were enacted through which much harsher punishments were introduced.

The prisoners stated that previously bail was allowed to prisoners under section 497 of the CrPC on grounds of delay in conclusion of a trial, but the previous military government amended that proviso of section 497 and now the prisoners no longer enjoyed that benefit.