BANNU, Sept 11: There are 550 prisoners in the district jail which is designed to hold only 229 inmates, sources said.

They said that the jail's building dated back to 1857 and was meant to contain prisoners after the War of Independence.

Prisoners, they said, were herded in the building while work on a new jail building was continuing for the past three years.

The rooms for the jail staff and terraces looked like archaeological sites and some of its rooms have already collapsed.

Talking to this correspondent, jail superintendent Usman Ali Marwat said that the problem of overcrowding was common in jails all over the province.

Mr Marwat said that the new building would be completed within the next two or three months and would have a capacity to hold 600 inmates. "The new jail has eight prisoner barracks," he added.

Expressing concerns about security, he said that jail officials was more likely to encounter problems in bringing prisoners from the new jail to courts as it was too far from the city.