Adiala Jail: Prisoner dies under unexplained circumstances

Prisoner was found dead in the jail’s hospital late Sunday evening and the cause is yet to be established,says...

RAWALPINDI:

A 45-year-old convicted prisoner has died in Adiala Jail under mysterious circumstances, sources said on Monday.

Jail authorities claimed that the prisoner had died after suffering cardiac arrest.

The deceased, identified as Tariq Mehmood, who hailed from Chakori village in Gujrat, was completing his jail term following his conviction by a court in a murder case.

He was found dead in the jail’s hospital late Sunday evening and the cause is yet to be established, the sources said.

However, Deputy Superintendent Adiala Jail Chaudhry Ilyas Ahmed, when contacted, said that the prisoner died of cardiac failure.

He said that while the jail authorities were counting the prisoners in barracks in the evening on Sunday, a prisoner reported to the jail wardens that Tariq was feeling severe pain in his chest.

“The wardens rushed him to the hospital but he was pronounced dead on arrival by the doctors,” Ahmed said.

He said that a lower court had awarded Tariq with a death sentence in a murder case but later the Lahore High Court commuted his death sentence into life imprisonment.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th, 2013.