Top court seeks reports on prison conditions

Regrets that provinces have failed to build more jails

ISLAMABAD:

The top court has sought reports from inspector general prisons and home secretaries of all provinces on jail conditions, particularly on the health facilities provided to the inmates.

Hearing a suo motu case regarding condition of inmates in prisons all over the country, the Supreme Court’s two-judge bench – comprising Justice Amir Hani Muslim and Justice Dost Muhammad – on Tuesday noted that it is the job of monitoring judges of provincial high courts to examine the jail conditions.

Justice Hani remarked that federal ombudsman has no role in this case as he does not have power to implement laws regarding improvement of jail conditions.

Punjab’s Additional Advocate General Razaq A Mirza informed the court that there are 35 jails in the province and the provincial government has allocated funds for the reconstruction of five jails. “These jails will be renovated by the next year,” he said.

Observing that most prisons in Pakistan were constructed during the British era, he questioned why the government failed to add more jails despite the fact that jails are overcrowded and prisoners are having a lot of problems.

Justice Dost Muhammad said whether the provincial governments will do anything or the Supreme Court will have to perform their functions.

“When I was chief justice of Peshawar High Court, a delegation of foreign donors met me and offered to build a high security prison in Malakand, but I told them to contact the provincial government,” the judge said. “However, the jail could not be built in Malakand as yet,” he added.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) home secretary admitted that prisons in the province were overfull and the number of inmates was three times the jails’ capacity.

“However, the government has a plan to enhance the capacity of prisons in order to reduce the burden on existing facilities,” he said, adding that a jail would be built in Mardan while Peshawar jail would be expanded.

Balochistan’s additional advocate general told the court that there are 11 jails in the province but there is no plan to construct new ones. Sindh’s advocate general said there are 24 prisons in the province. It has no plan to set up a new facility.

However, Justice Hani told him that the provincial government had built new prisons in Nawabshah, Larkana and Mirpurkhas and regretted that the law officer of Sindh was completely ignorant of the fact.

Later, the bench adjourned hearing of the case for two weeks.

Meanwhile, hearing another case regarding registration of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Justice Hani observed that it was not the job of the apex court to check the NOGs’ sources of funding. “It is the responsibility of the federal government to evolve a mechanism in this regard,” he observed.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 16^th, 2015.