Apropos a report, ‘Can we punish mentally ill people?’, published in Dawn’s Friday edition, a spokesperson for the Justice Project Pakistan has clarified that Sarah Belal did not say the judiciary’s “misunderstanding of mental illnesses”.

The spokesperson said: “In fact, her mention of the Imdad Ali case was strictly restricted to a) the facts contained in Imdad’s jail medical record, and b) the reviews that had been filed by the IG prisons and the Prosecutor General.”

Referring to the quotation “This is not an isolated incident. It is systemic injustice”, the spokesperson said: “Ms Belal very clearly stated that it was a systemic problem” and that she did not use the word “injustice”.

Referring to the quotation “This is a recurring cycle as a mentally ill prisoner’s first evaluation, mostly sloppy, is done inside the prison. Many such prisoners, mostly poor and vulnerable, remain undiagnosed,” the spokesperson said: “Ms Belal said, that in the past, mentally ill death row prisoners have been executed when a medical record for them existed as seen in the case of Muneer Hussein. She never stated that prison medical evaluations are “sloppy”.”

Published in Dawn December 10th, 2016