PESHAWAR, Sep 12: A mentally ill prisoner convicted under the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) is languishing in the Peshawar Central Prison despite completion of his jail term.

The administration of Kurram Agency had sentenced Tahir Hussain to about 54 years of rigorous imprisonment in 1990 on charge of carrying explosives.

However, FCR Commissioner Jalat Khan commuted his sentence to 14 years on Aug 31, 2005, and reduced the fine from Rs150,000 to Rs45,000.

It is learnt that the prisoner has spent more time than his prison term, but the tribal administration is not issuing his release order on the pretext that they would file an appeal before the FCR Tribunal against the judgment of the FCR commissioner.

In January 2005, the relatives of Mr Hussain had filed an appeal with the provincial home secretary for his medical examination. The application was forwarded to the Bannu district prison, where the prisoner was imprisoned at that time, via the administration of Kurram Agency.

His medical examination conducted on May 2, 2005, confirmed that Tahir Hussain had a history of mental ailment and was patient.

The prison authorities suggested his shifting to Peshawar for treatment. On the directives of the provincial home department on June 17, orders for the shifting to the Peshawar mental hospital were passed.

The assistant political agent (APA) of Upper Kurram, on June 30, 1990, had sentenced the appellant to 14-year rigorous imprisonment on three counts. The APA had ordered that the sentences should run consecutively and not concurrently, which made his total sentence to 42 years imprisonment.

The APA had also fined him Rs150,000 on three counts, in default of which he had to undergo 12 years more apart from those 42 years. At the time of his arrest, Tahir Hussain was about 18.

Under the FCR, the appellate forum against the judicial order of the APA or political agent is the FCR commissioner. A revision petition could be filed against the order of the commissioner before the FCR tribunal, comprising the provincial home and law secretaries.

Advocate Ilyas Ahmad Qureshi of the Voice of Prisoners, an organization dealing with the cases of helpless prisoners, had appeared on behalf of Mr Hussain.

He said the assistant political agent had violated the law by ordering to run the sentences consecutively. He argued that the appellant had already spent about 15 years behind the bars and if the sentence was maintained, he would spent about four decades more in the prison.

Mr Qureshi referred to Section 12 of the FCR and contended that the APA had no powers to sentence to over 14-year imprisonment. He had also violated the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, the advocate said.

The commissioner had referred to a judgment of the Peshawar High Court and reduced the sentence to 14 years, observing that the sentences should run concurrently. The sentence for the default of payment of fine should not exceed the one-forth of the substantive sentence, he added.