PESHAWAR, Nov 9: Boys as young as eight, being handcuffed and put in prison for minor offences, suffer psychological abuse which is often difficult to bear.

Although, under the Juvenile Justice Ordinance, 2000, handcuffing and fettering of minors are banned, the local police continues to use the age-old method of bringing children to courts in handcuffs.

The law also prescribes for the establishment of borstals for juveniles, but they are being kept in prisons.

“I still remember the pain when I was handcuffed and brutally dragged to the court,” said Aqil, a boy of eight released from central prison here on Wednesday.

The boy, who was absolved of the charges of drug-trafficking by a trial court, recalled his days inside the prison, saying that life there was miserable, specially the food.

“The thought of cops coming and putting me in the prison all over again, still haunts me,” he said. “There were dozens of other children like me there,” he added.

“Before my arrest I did not know what heroin was, but now I am familiar with it as I heard the cops, who arrested me and my mother, aunt and my four-year-old cousin, use the word ‘heroin’ repeatedly in their conversation,” Aqil claimed.

At the time of his arrest Aqil was a student of class two in Pak Muslim School, Kamonki (Punjab). He is not sure whether he could ever go back to school again.

Aqil seems to have matured a lot during his four months in prison, but according to his counsel, Noor Alam, when he first met him in the prison he was just a child.

“We were given to eat tasteless daal (lentils), cooked without any spices or ghee, with bread often with straws and sand in it,” the boy said.

A child rights activist told Dawn that Pakistan was signatory to the United Nations Charter of 1945 and Convention on the Rights of Children, following which a child offender could not be kept in an atmosphere which can affect his/her health adversely.