RAWALPINDI, April 2: A jail official and seven prisoners were injured in a clash that erupted in Adiala Jail on Sunday when the jail staff tried to force feed the under-trial prisoners (UTPs) who had been on hunger strike since Saturday, security sources said. Deputy Superintendent Malik Safdar and one prisoner who suffered serious injuries in the clash had to be removed to the jail hospital, according to the sources.

Heavily armed police surrounded the Barrack No.7 soon after the clash started there but the jail guards were able to subdue the rioters without police intervention.

However the under-trials’ protest spread as scores of hardened criminals and juvenile delinquents among the nearly 5,000 jail inmates joined the hunger strike.

A prisoner was quoted by the sources as alleging that the hunger strikers went violent when the jail staff, after failing in their persuasive tactics, used rough methods to make them end their hunger strike.

The violent prisoners raised slogans against the jail staff and demanded that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and the Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz visit the jail to see the inhuman conditions and treatment they are allegedly made to suffer in the jail which was built for 2,500 prisoners but accommodates almost twice that number.

Sources said the nearly 500 protesting prisoners barricaded themselves inside Barrack No.7. However the jail staff succeeded in shifting them to another detention area. The “trouble-makers” among them were likely to be transported to some other jail in the province on Monday.

Unrest had been brewing in the overcrowded jail for months over the allegations of torture and drug trafficking by the prisoners.

Last month Superintendent Malik Shaukat Feroz had resigned after being admonished by his superiors for several incidents inside the jail. But his resignation was not accepted and he was transferred to Lahore instead.

Shortly after the prisoners went on hunger strike on Saturday, Punjab’s Inspector General of Prisons Sarfaraz Ahmed Mufti directed the DIG Headquarters Abdul Sattar Aajiz to rush to Rawalpindi and resolve the crisis. He visited the Adiala Jail on Sunday but did not succeed in his mission.

Sunday’s violence seems to have deepened the crisis in the Adiala jail whose inmates had been restive since the system of remissions in their jail terms were stopped by the Supreme Court in 2004 after a mother complained to the court that remissions gained two convicted murderers of her son freedom.