LARKANA: Unrest among inmates in the Larkana Central Prison is resurging as a good number of them have started disobeying the jail police over what they claimed “excesses” against them on the part of the administration.

The prison had witnessed weeks-long protest by inmates that had started late Dec 2021 and ended by mid-February this year. During the protest, several wardens were held hostage for eight days until before a “settlement” through negotiations between the jail administration and protesting inmates. The trouble was apparently caused by transfer of certain ‘hardcore’ convicts to some other jails.

On Tuesday, a large group of inmates defied jail police’s order of ‘total’ — a term used for ‘return to barracks after the day’s rigour”. They had earlier managed to send audios and videos of alleged excesses against them by the jail authorities to the media. They complained about delayed serving of food, more frequent disruption in power supply to their barracks and insulting behaviour on the part of the police. They also complained about extortion by the jail police while shifting them to newly opened district jail upon their conviction.

In the videos, protesting inmates were seen protesting near the main gate inside the jail carrying utensils and buckets.

Rejecting the allegations, Senior Superintendent of the Larkana Central Prison Ashfaq Kalwar told this reporter that it had become a routine affair that the inmates would resist ‘total’. They were applying such tactics to dictate the jail administration, he said.

The SP said that the jail administration was dealing with the issue of overpopulation of inmates and for the purpose a district jail had been opened.

“Under a new strategy, undertrial prisoners are sent to the district jail and when any of them is convicted, he is either shifted to the jails in Khairpur or Sukkur; or is kept at the district jail,” he said. This would gradually reduce the central prison’s population, he added.

SP Kalwar said that out of the 1,100 inmates, almost 300 had already been shifted to other jails.

According to him, the number of troublemakers is hardly 15 to 20 and they are instigating UTPs to disobey the jail police’s order to be taken to courts for the hearing of their cases.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2022