KARACHI: The Sindh government has started shifting “high-profile” inmates from the Central Prison Karachi to jails in other districts on advice of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, a top official confirmed to Dawn on Sunday.

More than a dozen “militants” were shifted considering that some inmates had been operating from inside the Central Prison Karachi, causing a breakdown of law and order in the city, sources and senior officials said.

The move came after a series of meetings on the issue of jails’ security, they added.

Move is part of the exercise aimed at improving the security of prisons

In the first phase, the high-profile militants belonging to banned outfits, both under trial as well as those serving their terms, were shifted from Karachi Central Prison to jails in other parts of the province, the officials said. More inmates were likely to be transferred to other jails in the second phase, they added.

“We have moved some 19 high-profile inmates from Karachi’s central prison to prisons in Hyderabad and Sukkur,” said Sindh Minister for Prisons Zia-ul-Hasan Lanjar while responding to Dawn queries.

“The proposal was forwarded by the jail and security authorities for different reasons and in the first phase, some militants of the banned outfits were shifted from the Central Prison.

“The jail in Karachi is overcrowded and obviously that causes many other issues. The shifting [of militants] is part of the several measures we have taken for security and good administration.”

Last month two “high-profile militants” of the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi (LJ) allegedly involved in over 60 murders had escaped from the Central Prison Karachi.

Within a couple of weeks after their escape, the Pakistan Rangers, Sindh, conducted a search operation inside the prison where they were assisted by the Pakistan army, intelligence agencies and police. In the sweeping operation, the paramilitary force claimed to have seized hundreds of mobile phones, dozens of TV sets and over Rs3.5 million cash. The security agencies during the exercise also found an active mobile phone network in the prison which was being run with the help of modern devices to avoid the impact of mobile phone jammers.

The Rangers led the snoop — the first of its kind in the past 25 years — that resulted in the recovery of the items not allowed under the jail manual and included physical search of around 6,000 prisoners belonging to all political, religious and banned outfits in different barracks.

The fresh move to shift the high-profile militants, an official said, was part of the exercise to improve jail’s security. It also included the deployment of more security men in and around the prison and the Rangers-led search operation.

Overcrowded jails

“The key issue in managing jails is overcrowding. As it leads to several other issues, it must be addressed at the earliest. You can’t get better results in a long term with temporary and short-term moves.”

The two jails in Karachi are reported to be the most overcrowded among the 25 prisons of Sindh. They house inmates nearly three times of their actual capacity. A recent report prepared by the prisons department said that the Karachi central prison, the second-oldest jail after Hyderabad’s, houses 6,174 prisoners while its authorized capacity was around 2,400 inmates.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2017