LAHORE, Nov 17: Two prisoners were tortured to death and two others seriously injured by officials of the Kasur District Jail on Sunday.

According to reports some 90 prisoners were marked as “troublemakers” in the Sahiwal Central Jail after last week’s riots. The Punjab prison authorities decided to shift these prisoners to other jails to maintain law and order.

Four were brought to Kasur jail at 7am on Sunday where they were severely tortured allegedly for protesting their transfer.

“Beating such prisoners is considered part of the jail officials’ job,” a source told Dawn and added, such prisoners were generally beaten into submission on arrival at a new jail.

The two prisoners, Khayali Khan, 30, a resident of Multan, and Shahzad, 28, from Sahiwal, who died, were doing life sentences.

The other two, Muhammad Ramzan and Muhammad Zubair, were admitted to the Kasur District Hospital in critical condition.

The Punjab IGP (Prisons), Parvez Raheem Rajput, told a hurriedly-called news conference held at the office of the Directorate General of Public Relations (DGPR) that on learning about the incident he rushed to the jail and found out that prisoners had been mishandled.

“This is an unfortunate incident,” he said adding, initial findings had disclosed that the jail staff had misused power.

“I am, however, surprised what caused the death of the prisoners because there were no apparent torture marks on their bodies,” the IGP claimed.

Excluding the jail superintendent, Hamid Khan, who, according to the IGP was not present at the time of the occurrence, he said seven jail officials had been suspended.

The names of the suspended officers are: Assistant Superintendents Jail, Muhammad Husain, Muhammad Mansha; Deputy Superintendent, Muhammad Bashir; Chief Warder, Muhammad Omar; Head Warder, Hakeemat Khan; and Warder, Muhammad Nazeer.

The IGP said a murder case had been registered against them. Out of the seven, he claimed, four had been taken into custody and the other three had managed to escape.

Gate warder, Muhammad Amin, had been suspended and a separate case registered against him for helping others to flee.

He said, under directions from the District and Sessions Judge, Kasur, a senior civil judge had been appointed as inquiry officer who will present his report by Tuesday.

Hospital sources said that the bodies of the two prisoners would be handed over to their families after postmortem by a board of doctors.

No one has come to claim these bodies so far.