KARACHI, July 20: Children living with their mothers in the Special Prison for Women of the city enjoyed a function organised by an NGO, on the lawns of the prison here on Thursday morning.

These children are living in the prison for no crime of their own, but since their mothers are in the prison, and they do not have anyone else to take care of them outside so they are forced to live in the prison.

Earlier, the NGO was scheduled to take the children out for a picnic, but owing to security concerns, particularly after the assassination of Allama Hasan Turabi, the prison authorities did not allow the proposal for a picnic, and the NGO was advised to arrange some function in the prison.

The function comprised a magic show in which a magician kept the children and their mothers, who were also allowed by the prison authorities to come out of their barracks and sit on the lawns, spell bound with his tricks. Many a children, one by one, were also called by the magician to the stage to assist him in the tricks.

In some of the tricks, the magician made the children check an empty box and show it to the audience and later asked these children to take out handkerchiefs and pigeons etc from the empty box. The children who took these things out of the box, and those witnessing the trick from among the audience liked the tricks very much.

The jail chief Sheeba Shah said that the jail authorities with the assistance from the NGOs and philanthropists organised such events as well as picnics for these children so that they saw the life outside prison and also enjoyed such programmes that other normal children attended as a matter of routine.