KARACHI, Dec 20: Sindh Home Minister Rauf Siddiqui has said that seventy per cent of the prisoners could be freed by the courts as they were languishing in the jails since years for the crimes they had never committed.

“It is up to the courts to play the role and dispense justice to the innocent persons,” he said while addressing at a three-day training workshop for lawyers organized by the Society for Human Rights and Prisoners’ Aid at a local hotel on Monday night.

He said that lawyers could protect the rights of people and urged them to work for dispensation of justice to those who were ignorant of their legal rights and were helpless to seek justice.

“A majority of prisoners is languishing in jails for the last five years for having committed no crimes,” he said adding that the courts can release such persons.

He urged the religious scholars to play their role in getting the nation rid of such infamous and un-Islamic traditions.

Rauf Siddiqui suggested the human rights organization to get published booklets in Sindhi, Urdu, Balochi, Pushto, Punjabi and other languages on legal rights of people.—PPI