ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal seeking the transfer of Mehr Abdul Sattar — a rights activist working with the peasants of Okara district — from a high-security prison in Sahiwal to Okara district jail.

A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, dismissed the appeal against a June 2017 order of the Lahore High Court, which upheld the Punjab government’s decision to transfer Mehr Sattar from the Okara district jail to the Sahiwal prison. The court, however, held that the trial could be held inside the jail.

The petition had been filed earlier by right activists, represented by the now deceased lawyer Asma Jahangir, requesting the court to remove Mehr Sattar’s fetters and to provide him protection under the law against inhumane treatment in prison.

On Wednesday, Mehr Sattar’s case was argued by senior counsel Abid Saqi, who pleaded that the inmate was facing 36 cases and that he had been kept in solitary confinement at a high-security prison for the past several months.

Mehr Sattar was a secretary and representative of the Anjuman-i-Mazareen Punjab and had been striving for the rights of the peasants of Okara district since 1997.

He had also contested general elections for a Punjab Assembly seat from PP-191 in Okara in 2008 and 2013 general elections.

He was detained on April 16, 2016 under Section 3(3)(a) of the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance 1960 for offences committed under Section 6-A of the Punjab Maintenance of Public Ordinance (prohibition of certain speeches).

Later he was produced before an administrative judge of the anti-terrorism court in Lahore who ordered 90-day detention for Sattar on charges of working against national security and inciting sectarianism.

Mehr Sattar’s counsel then moved the LHC against the torture he was forced to undergo, and the fetters he had to wear.

The peasant leader was later shifted to the high-security prison on March 9, 2017 with a request by the provincial government that the trial of the accused be held on the premises of the jail through video conference.

The high-security prison where Mehr Sattar is being kept is a sensitive institution where high-profile terrorists/sectarian convicts are kept in custody.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2018