Overcrowded: Adiala Jail cells brimming over with prisoners

Jail superintendent says he has 5,000 inmates against a capacity of 2,000

ISLAMABAD: Adiala Jail Superintendent Mushtaq Ahmed Awan has said that the prison was housing prisoners far beyond its capacity, making it difficult for the administration to run its affairs smoothly.

While briefing a delegation of the Advisory Committee of Federal Ombudsman led by Convener SM Tahir who visited the prison on Thursday, the jail superintendent told them that the jail was overcrowded with a total of 5,000 prisoners against a total capacity of 2,000.

He briefed the delegation about facilities being provided to the prisoners and the problems the inmates and the jail administration faced.

Awan said that the main reason behind the overcrowding was due to nonexistence of a jail in Islamabad, as prisoners from the federal capital were also being kept there.

He said that the ban on inter-provincial transfer of prisoners was also a major cause of congestion as a large number of prisoners from Khyber-Pakhtukhwa were also being kept in Adiala Jail.

While talking about high profile prisoners, Awan said that many terrorists belonging to different banned organisations were also languishing in the jail, which also causes apprehension from time to time.

He told the delegation that female and juvenile detainees were being kept in separate barracks to keep them aloof from addicted and hardcore prisoners. Answering a question, he said that the jail security has been beefed up after the DI Khan jailbreak by putting in place a multi-layered defence mechanism.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2015.