KARACHI: Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has ordered the provincial home department to notify the famous Meetha Ram Hostel — once providing lodging facilities to students of the D.J. Science College — a sub-jail to accommodate ‘dangerous’ prisoners, officials said on Wednesday.

The officials in the Sindh government said that Mr Shah had signed a summary sent by the provincial home department seeking his directive about a request of Rangers for a separate facility from normal prisons for individuals being held during its ongoing targeted operations in Karachi.

In its request en route to the home department, the officials said, the Rangers said that the individuals being picked up during the ongoing efforts should be kept in an exclusive facility, far away from prisons, so that they could not communicate with their fellows already in jails.

The officials said that after the chief minister’s signing of the summary, a formal notification would be issued for granting the Meetha Ram Hostel the status of a sub-jail on Thursday. However, they added that the facility would be guarded by officials of the provincial prisons department as required under the law.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2015

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