Prisoners boycotted their hearings at the Sessions Court on Saturday in a protest against the alleged torture of an inmate and desecration of the Holy Quran by a Camp Jail official.
An additional district and sessions judge ordered a medical examination of the alleged torture victim after the Camp Jail prisoners refused to leave the judicial lockup to attend court proceedings.
Jail officials denied the charges, saying the prisoners leading the boycott were a group of hardened criminals who were trying to control the jail.
On Saturday morning, the prisoners from Camp Jail refused to leave the lockup at the Sessions Court for their hearings. “Hurmat-i-Quran par jaan bhee qurban hai,” they chanted. Some prisoners banged their heads against the iron bars when police officials tried to drag them to the courtroom. Not a single prisoner from Camp Jail attended court proceedings.
Meanwhile, outside the judicial lockup, relatives of several prisoners told off police officials, blaming them for the non-appearance in court of their loved ones.
Prisoner Moazam Butt, the alleged torture victim, told The Express Tribune that during a search of his cell on March 3, Assistant Superintendent Arif Shehzad tore up a plastic bag containing pages bearing verses from the Holy Quran, as a result of which some pages fell to the ground. He said that when he asked Shehzad why he had done so, he and other jail officials thrashed him.
City SSP Muhammad Anwar Khaitran, DSP (Judicial) Qazi Shahin, District Public Prosecutor Shaikh Saeed and Judicial Magistrate Irfan Anjum came to the lockup to try and end the boycott, but the prisoners insisted that it would continue until an FIR was registered against the jail official who allegedly desecrated the Holy Quran.
Butt was later produced before Additional District and Sessions Judge Munir Ahmed, who directed the medical superintendent of Mian Munshi Hospital to conduct a medical exam of the prisoner and submit a report as soon as possible.
Another prisoner named Ilyas Butt alias Pappu Toka told The Express Tribune that he believed that the allegations about the desecration of the Holy Quran were cooked up by the prisoners to try and gain power inside the jail.
Camp Jail Superintendent Ijaz Asghar said the prisoners’ allegations were baseless. He said that ASP Shehzad was a capable and honourable official and would not desecrate the Holy Quran.
He said that a group of prisoners led by Moazam Butt, Ali Nawaz, Muhammad Asif and Muhammad Dildar were plotting against the jail authorities. He said Butt was being tried for at least 10 cases of murder. He said these prisoners were ill-disciplined and liked to challenge authority. He said that in the morning as the prisoners were being put into a van for transport to the Sessions Court, Butt had insisted that he should not be handcuffed. He said that the medical report would prove that Butt had not been tortured.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 8th, 2012.
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