LAHORE: Majority of the prisoners who are brought back to their respective jails after court hearings under police custody are intoxicated and dealing with such addicts is currently the most daunting challenge for the entire Punjab Prisons department.
Reliable sources in the Prisons department told Business Recorder that thousands of under-trial prisoners (UTPs) are transported to the courts by personnel of the Punjab police on daily basis for hearing of their cases.
“As per the standard operating procedures (SOPs), these inmates are confined in Bakhshi Khanas (judicial lockups inside courts) before being presented before courts. Meanwhile, the policemen, deputed for their security, supply them drugs and mint money from them or their friends or families who reach there to have meetings. They (policemen) not only supply them drugs but also allow them to consume it in their presence,” the sources claimed.
A well-placed source privy to the information said that hashish and crystal-meth are two most common drugs which are being provided to the UTPs by the police officers and dealing with such addicts is the most challenging task for the Punjab prisons amid lethargic attitude of the Punjab police.
To deal with the situation arising, Punjab Inspector General for Prisons Mirza Shahid Saleem Baig along with his team also recently held a meeting with Punjab Inspector General for Police (IGP) Rao Sardar Ali Khan and informed him about the alleged role of police officers supplying drugs to the prisoners, the source said.
According to him, the IG police assured the IG prisons that he will look into the matter and award punishments to the black sheep in the Police department. To discharge the formality, he said, the Police department later suspended a deputy superintendent of police (judicial) and issued show-cause notices to a few others.
Another senior official familiar with the development said that around 195 prisoners have so far died in jails during the current year and it is “suspected” that many of them died after developing complications due to drugs or its overdose.
The source said that the most alarming situation is in Camp Jail Lahore, which is the biggest jail in Punjab for UTPs. “Currently, there are about 4,000 UTPs confined in Camp Jail and nearly 650-700 prisoners are handed over to police custody for their productions before courts on daily basis,” disclosed a senior jail officer seeking anonymity.
“Of the 700 UTPs, around 70 percent of the prisoners are brought back to the jail intoxicated leaving us in a fix,” he said, adding that detoxification of addicts is a complicated procedure which requires constant medical care which was not possible for them because they have no medicines for the purpose.
Due to this, the source said that a total of 47 prisoners have been died in Camp Jail during this year. “Of them, six inmates died within the last two weeks alone, and their cause of death was drug consumption or overdose,” he claimed. He said that there is only one doctor available at Camp Jail who cannot look after so many people at the same time.
When contacted, Camp Jail Superintendent Noor-ul-Hassan Bhagella said they don’t have the required detoxification facility and that they had requested the Lahore High Court (LHC) during the hearing of public interest litigation that addicts should be referred to rehabilitation centres instead of jails.
According to Bhagella, the LHC had directed the Social Welfare and Bait-ul-Maal (SW&BM) Punjab to establish rehab centres for addicts. However, no such facility was established till date, he added.
Another senior jail officer, however, blamed the prisons department’s senior command for the entire situation due to their failure to “convince” the Punjab Home department high-ups for empowering them to transport inmates to courts instead of police.
“Authorizing prison department’s employees to transport inmates to courts is the only solution to the issue in question because the higher jail authorities cannot directly seek explanations from police officers in case of any security lapse as was seen recently in Lahore Model Town court when nearly 12 UTPs escaped from police custody,” the officer said.
He said the proposal to transfer transportation powers from police to the prison department was pending for a long time because the higher-ups never pursued it because they do not want to increase their burden or take responsibilities.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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