The report says more than 1,000 inmates from the Karachi Central Jail, Landhi and Malir jails are presented every day in courts. Since the police do not have a sufficient number of handcuffs to go round for such large numbers, they often chain them up, in violation of human rights. Thus prisoners are subjected to brutality. This inhuman practice has been going on for decades. Jails are overcrowded lacking all basic facilities. For instance, the Karachi Central Jail has 4,846 inmates against its capacity for 24,00. Many under-trial prisoners have been languishing in various jails for petty crimes for years but the police allegedly don’t present them in courts. There have been no jails reforms since Pakistan has come into being. A few days ago, the Sindh cabinet approved a policy to introduce drastic reforms to “The prison Act of 1894,” which is in place in the province. Sharing the salient features of the amendment law to be presented in the Sindh Assembly, officials said the prisoners were to be treated differently with provision of biometric system and they would also be provided with legal aid. We welcome the decision. Here we would like draw the attention of the authorities to the problem of implementation of laws. There are hosts of laws on the statute books but we all see how and how many of them are implemented.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 2nd, 2019.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ