LARKANA: While a large group of inmates on Tuesday continued a week-long protest against alleged excesses by officials and miserable living conditions in the Larkana Central Prison, the jail chief has said that they are raising a hue and cry only to stop the administration from launching an operation clean-up planned to be started within a couple of days.

Senior Superintendent of the jail Ashfaq Kalwar has said that Sindh Rangers and other security agencies have been taken in confidence for the operation clean-up aimed at recovering all prohibited items and objects from inmates. He rejected the allegations being levelled by the “hardcore group of inmates”.

The audio and video messages being sent to the mainstream and social media through mobile phones (not allowed to be kept by inmates), claimed that inadequate water and poor quality food being served to inmates; electric supply to barracks being suspended for hours; ailing inmates were denied medical treatment; and jail manual not being adhered to. Some of the messages alleged that food and water had been denied altogether for the last eight days. Through these messages, they appealed to the Supreme Court and human rights organisations to intervene and save them from the alleged excesses.

The jail chief, however, argued that how could inmates survive if such allegations were true.

SSP Kalwar said that the head of Rangers in Larkana on Tuesday visited the jail and held a detailed meeting with him on the planned operation.

“We are prepared for the operation now after necessary meetings with stakeholders in this connection have already been held,” he said.

The central prison had witnessed violent protests by inmates in December last year and the rioting continued till February this year. The agitating inmates had levelled the same allegations in that episode but the jail chief and his administration had taken the stand that some hardcore prisoners were actually resisting a plan to shift them to some other jails in the province. The officials had claimed that their transfer would help reduce the overcrowded jail’s population on the one hand, and prevent the “trouble-makers” from instigating others to rioting, on the other. Eventually, many prisoners were gradually shifted to other jails and a district jail was established in Larkana to accommodate a few hundred undertrial and other inmates. The process is still continuing.

SSP Kalwar told this reporter that over 100 prisoners had recently been shifted to other jails after they accepted the administration’s offer of “voluntary transfer”. He said 10 to 15 more were ready to be transferred. They would expectedly be moved out tomorrow (June 8), he added.

He pointed out that the population of the central prison till June 2 was 790 and as of today, it’s 685.

According to the recently adopted policy, undertrial prisoners are to be kept in the district jail and the others required to be moved out of the central prison are to be sent to different jails within the province.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2022