Mysterious circumstances: Undertrial prisoner dies only three days after arrest

HYDERABAD:

An undertrial prisoner, 40-year-old Maqsood Mughal, who was accused of kidnapping his married sister, died of cardiac arrest at Nara Jail late on Sunday night.

His arrest on January 23 and subsequent death have led to a court enquiry and a backlash from the bereaved family. The deceased’s brother, Mehboob Mughal, filed a plea in the Human Rights Cell of the district and sessions court and brought the dead body to the press club to protest. “My brother-in-law nominated Maqsood in a fake FIR of kidnapping our sister,” he told.

According to him, his sister Rabia, who was wedded to Irfan Jatt, returned to their home in Jhol, Sanghar district, complaining of being physically assaulted by her husband.



Jatt, who lives in Hyderabad’s Labour Colony, lodged an FIR at the SITE police station, alleging that Maqsood had forcefully taken away his wife and two-month-old daughter Fatima.

The police arrested Maqsood on December 23 from Jhol and was produced in Civil Court 12 the next day along with his sister. Rabia told the judge that her brother has been wrongly implicated in the FIR and that she left her husband’s home on her own. She also told the court that she had filed a divorce application in a court in Nawabshah.

“I urge the higher judiciary to investigate as to why the civil judge sent my brother to jail even when my sister gave a statement against her husband,” Mehboob said. On his request, civil judge Tasawar Hussain personally oversaw the postmortem of Maqsood, which showed that his death had been of natural causes. However, the district and sessions judge, Imdad Hussain Khaoso, has ordered the civil judge 12 and the jailer of Nara to submit reports regarding Maqsood’s imprisonment.

Mehboob, in his application, invoked section 63 of Code of Criminal Procedure and Article 9 of the Constitution, accusing the civil judge of conniving with his brother-in-law.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2014.