KARACHI: The Sindh police have finally identified the 63 persons released from Karachi prisons on parole more than a decade ago. They included three convicts, one of them convicted on terrorism charges, but the law-enforcement agency seems unaware of their whereabouts to be able to rearrest them, it emerged on Wednesday.

In the data recently compiled by the police, 63 prisoners of the Karachi range are mentioned as having been released on parole. The details of their crimes with the current status of their cases are also part of the database. Among the total of 70 prisoners released on parole under the authority granted by the home department, 63 belonged to the Karachi range.

“The orders for the release of most of the prisoners came from the home department in the second half of 2003,” said a source citing details of the Sindh police data. “Apart from Karachi, two prisoners from Mirpurkhas and five from Hyderabad were released on parole several years ago. These 70 prisoners were facing a total of 155 cases ranging from murder, attempt to murder, terrorism, illegal arms and other criminal acts.”

He said three prisoners were actually convicts when they were released under the parole granted by the Sindh home department and one of them was even handed down 14-year imprisonment by an anti-terrorism court in 1999 in a case registered by the Preedy police under Section 7 of the Anti-terrorism Act.

“There are 14 prisoners who were freed on parole and whose non-bailable warrants have already been issued. The death of one such prisoner was confirmed by the police. He died after being released on parole by the authorities in August 2003. The fate of the others is not known,” he added.

While presiding over a meeting on the city’s law and order, Sindh chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah in December 2013 ordered 10 courts to take care of heinous crimes and told the home department to make arrangements for shifting hardened criminals from Karachi to prisons in other provinces and arresting those who had been ‘illegally’ released by the government of his predecessor, Arbab Ghulam Rahim.

The directives came after the chief minister was briefed by the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, which claimed to have evidence about the involvement of those individuals in crimes committed in Karachi, leading to the decision to shift not only the inmates to other provinces who were running mafias but also to arrest those who had been released on parole before the PPP government.

Doubts were already there about an aggressive government plan, which had finally decided to move on these lines after spending five years as the ruling party both in the province and the centre, but the recent data compiled by the police authorities suggested it was an uphill task for the law-enforcement agencies to meet the challenge.

“You may find final remarks on the status of each prisoner released on parole. Each remark suggests that the police concerned have been making efforts, sending warning letters and raiding different areas for their arrest but getting no success,” said the source.

“After the Pakistan Peoples Party government took charge in 2008, then home minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza recommended cancellation of the parole of all the criminals and a summary was formally signed by the chief minister. So they all are wanted since 2008 but there are serious doubts that most of them have already left the country.”