RAWALPINDI: A prisoner on the death row in Adiala jail allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in a washroom on Thursday.

Nadeem Ahmad, a resident of Abbottabad, was brought to the prison in 2014 for kidnapping and murdering two children of his first cousin who was a foreign national. His appeal against the death sentence was pending in the Supreme Court of Pakistan since 2019.

Inspector General (IG) Prisons Punjab Mubashir Malik took notice of the incident and constituted a committee headed by Deputy Inspector General of Prisons Rawalpindi region Saeedullah Gondal to probe and file a report.

As soon as the prison administration received information about the incident, the medical officer of the jail was called who declared the prisoner dead. The jail superintendent requested the sessions judge Rawalpindi to allow them to conduct a postmortem and launch a judicial inquiry into the incident.

Later, the body was handed over to the police who shifted it to the District Headquarters Hospital for postmortem.

The prison authorities said the prisoner was suffering from mental stress and psychological problems for which doctors had prescribed medicines. The last psychological examination of the prisoner was conducted on January 4.

Sardar Mohammad Tahir, 45, a resident of Abbottabad and the elder brother of the deceased, who received the body, told the police that his late father had told him not to keep any contact with Nadeem. On Thursday night at 10pm, he said, he was informed by his uncle that Nadeem had committed suicide in the jail. He said he did not want legal proceedings against anyone.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2023