Curiouser and curiouser

There has been a curious incident reported at Kot Lakhpat jail in Punjab on Thursday September 27. The Punjab Minister for Prisons, Zawar Hussain, along with at least six other unnamed men, paid an unannounced visit and held a seemingly undocumented meeting with a number of militants who are members of banned organisations involved in suicide attacks in Lahore as well as under-trial sectarian inmates. This was unusual in itself but in the course of his visit he actually detained prison staff who attempted to accompany him. All this happened in the small hours of the night and has been detailed in a report to the home secretary by the prisons department. The men detained in the high-security barracks are by definition regarded as extremely dangerous, and unlocking them and effectively breaching the security cordon is at best ill-advised and at worst grossly irresponsible.

The minister behaved in a high-handed manner throughout and as yet there is no official response from the home secretary. Such unannounced visits are not so uncommon in general terms, but it is unusual for a minister of state to pounce at the dead of night unless he has a specific reason for doing so. He spent several hours in conversation with detainees, the substance of which is not in the public domain. Unannounced visits are usually in response to complaints about treatment of inmates by prison staff, and in that context entirely justified but this was something out of the ordinary.

It may have been that the minister decided for his own reasons to make what is clearly a political intervention perhaps triggered by those inside having powerful friends on the outside. Alternatively, those with sensitive hearing may have picked up murmurs that this was something quite different — a ham-fisted piece of back-channel dialogue with men who remain influential despite their incarceration. This may not be as Alice-in- Wonderland as it sounds with delicate relations with both Afghanistan and India much to the fore. Curiouser and curiouser whispered the terrorist softly.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 30^th, 2018.

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