HARIPUR, Dec 2: Authorities have quelled an alleged unrest in the Haripur jail on Monday night, reportedly forcing two judges of lower courts to cancel their visit in connection with jail trials of certain cases, jail administration and police officials said on Tuesday.

They said that some of the prisoners, who had been protesting against the jail authorities refusal to grant them remission in their jail terms, were planning to go on a “rampage” in a jail barrack here on Monday night.

Twenty prisoners were allegedly shifted to other jails in the province after the police conducted a late night manhunt for prisoners believed to have masterminded the protests.

Police officials told this correspondent that some prisoners in the barrack No4 of the Haripur central prison had staged a hunger strike, refusing to take their lunch on Monday protesting that their jail terms were not being commuted against the remission ordered by the federal government on the occasion of Eid.

Prisoners argued that jail authorities in other provinces had implemented the government’s orders well before Eid.

They were also reportedly protesting against the poor quality of food and lack of other facilities in violation of the jail manual.

But jail authorities had acted after receiving information about a prospective mutiny-like situation by protesters particularly on the arrival of a judge of a lower court to the jail premises in connection with the trial of some prisoners the next day.

These sources said that jail authorities had called out heavy contingents of police and FC and managed to quell the unrest and shifted about 20 hardened convicts, who were incarcerated and convicted for different serious nature offences.

Other protesting prisoners called off their strike after the IG jails, Col Abdul Rauf Khan, assured them about providing facilities under the jail manual besides taking up the case for their remission with authorities concerned.

Meanwhile, the jail superintendent, when approached by Dawn declined to provide details in this regard, saying that nothing of the sort happened in the jail and situation was “very much under the authorities’ control.”