Security plan: City court walls to be raised to keep prisoners in

Project expected to be completed by this year.

KARACHI:

The walls around the city courts will be raised to make the complex more secure and ensure that the prisoners do not escape.

According to the proposed security plan, the project is expected to be completed by this year.

However, Karachi Bar Association (KBA) general secretary Syed Haider Imam Rizvi felt that the walls should have been raised 20 years ago.

“This a sensitive area visited by around 100,000 people every day,” he said. “High-profile prisoners belonging to militants groups go to trial here and some unfortunate incidents have already happened in the past, including last year’s escape of Jundullah members.”

The first part of the plan - shifting the car parking to the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) lot on the Sindh High Court orders - was completed in May 5 and cost Rs6 million.

The CPLC used to pay Rs3.5 million to the high court, whose space they used for parking but the high court struck a deal: SHC administrative judge Justice Maqbool Baqar told the CPLC to give 75 per cent of their parking space to the city courts and they will waive the Rs3.5 million.

The parking for motorcycles will soon be shifted to Raja Riaz Road, which will help maintain security at the courts.

“The Sindh government works department had recommended Rs22.5 million for the security of the city courts,” said Rizvi. Raising the boundary wall is only the first part, he said, adding that in the next phase, 90 closed-circuit television cameras, tyre killers, walkthrough metal detectors, bearers, explosive detectors, check posts and a control room for the security cameras will be installed.

He believed that the city courts are not safe to begin with, but they are using the funds to make it as secure as possible.

The central jail is going to be shifted to the National Highway. “We have proposed that the site of the central jail should be handed to the high courts and a modern judicial complex should be constructed there,” said KBA president Muhammad Aqil Advocate. “All the courts should be transferred there and I think that place will be enough for the next 50 years.”

Rizvi agreed and said that, “the banking courts and drugs courts are in different places and people have to go from one place to another to attend a case”. It wastes the lawyers’ time when they have to appear in two consecutive cases, he said. In order to obtain the basics of an independent judiciary, he suggested setting up all courts in one place.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2011.