IF you are ever curious about how effective prisons’ security is, all you have to do is ask someone who lives in any of the localities close to Karachi’s central prison.

They are usually often stopped and questioned about their intentions by the security men around the prison if any of them makes the mistake of traversing the streets around the prison one time too many in, say, half an hour.

Such occurrences are only a small part of the intricate security arrangements in place around the central prison. Roads running alongside with prison are often closed to traffic; whenever there is a “high alert”, forcing motorists to use alternative routes.

Security agencies also have another ace up their sleeve: modern technology.

As a result, thousands of residents of Usmania Colony, PIB Colony and Ghausia Colony have not been able to use their mobile phones at home for the past few years because of the jammers installed inside and around the prison.

At a roadside eatery less than a kilometre from the prison, I asked Usmania Colony resident Sohail Siddiqi how secure he thought the prison was. In response, he simply showed me his mobile phone screen, which bore the inscription: ‘No Service’ where the mobile carrier’s name should have been.

“Sometimes our homes feel like a jail. You can’t go too close to the prison walls or you will be spotted and warned by the security staff deputed on the watchtowers. You cannot use cell phones at home or in your neighbourhood because of the jammers. And often, you will not be able to get back home the way you left, because the roads around the prison are closed due to security reasons. We used to think this was one of the most secure places on earth.”

All that changed last Wednesday, when two “high-profile militants” from the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) mounted a jailbreak — the most daring ever attempted from within the walls of the Karachi central prison — from an installation thought to be one of the best guarded in the country.

Mr Siddiqi’s assessment is not exaggerated; visiting the areas around the prison, you would also witness similar scenes. Tall walls several feet high, crowned with barbed wire and manned by burly personnel from the ranks of the Frontier Constabulary (FC), give one the impression that this is some kind of fortress.

“We often used to think that if our lives are so tough outside the prison, the security measures in place behind these walls would be quite effective,” says Noman Khan, a friend of Mr Siddiqi who is more concerned with the security arrangements that make life miserable for residents, rather than the possibility of a jailbreak.

“I think the [prison security administration] are more concerned with arrangements outside the jail than inside,” he says, prompting peals of approving laughter from others at the hotel.

But his words are also alarming: how is it that a multi-million rupee infrastructure that is designed to prevent escapes, and creates a nuisance for the people living around the facility, failed to achieve its primary objective?

The question then becomes one of integrity — is it merely sufficient to spend money and resources on ‘security arrangements’, or are the upright and honest people required to operate this high-tech security system more important to the equation?

The escape of militants from a banned outfit may be the most startling incident to unfold in recent months, but whenever security officials conduct operations inside the prison, they invariably find that illegal activities continue unabated inside the prison’s walls.

The June 2013 attack on Sindh High Court Justice Maqbool Baqar was said to have been planned inside the central prison, while routine search operations have often led to recovery of mobile phones, internet devices and drugs from different cells.

The last one, conducted just earlier this week by the Rangers, led to recovery of hundreds of cellphones, television sets, internet and anti-jamming devices, drugs and millions of rupees from the prison.

The escape itself sent shockwaves through the power corridors and police arrested 12 jail staffers, including the superintendent and the deputy superintendent of Karachi’s central prison, in its wake.

While this latest prison break captured the media spotlight due to the profile of the inmates who escaped, a few have gone unnoticed. In April this year, a woman inmate nearly made it — jail staff were only jolted into action after bystanders raised an uproar upon seeing the woman trying to scale the prison’s boundary wall. She was safely recaptured.

“Here we are, deprived of mobile phone services in the name of security, while inside [the jail] Rangers say mobile phone networks are active,” Mr Siddiqi says, referring to a recent news item.

“I heard a senior police official saying on television that it was gross negligence on the part of the jail staff, although they are also probing the possibility of an ‘inside job’. In either case, it’s an alarming and dangerous trend; a definite wake-up call for the authorities,” he concluded.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2017