Jail inmates suffer unheard: Amid pandemic, centenarian prisoner dies

ISLAMABAD: Mehdi Khan was 100-year-old by the time he was awarded sentence on a murder charge. He was too weak to walk and visually impaired; his heart and lungs malfunctioned. When police came for his arrest, he was in a wheelchair which accompanied him to jail in Gujrat.

An appeal was filed for his bail in February 2020 on grounds of old age and illness under Rule 146 of the Punjab Prison Rules. Prison Department was asked to furnish a reply. Medical examination confirmed the critical health conditions, according to Mehdi Khan’s lawyer, Hamza Haider. However, authorities and the complainant opposed his release.

By then, another six months passed and 2313 COVID-19 cases were reported in different jails; 136 in Gujrat District Jail where Mehdi Khan was imprisoned. Prison authorities in the meanwhile agreed to shift him to District Headquarters Hospital of Gujrat, but it was too late. He expired there a few days later.

Mehdi Khan was 101-year-old at the time of his death, probably the oldest prisoner. His sentence was in connection with a murder in 2007. Mehdi Khan, then 86-year-old, was also implicated. A trial court acquitted him in 2007. An appeal that followed in Lahore High Court was taken up in 2019 where his acquittal was turned down, and life sentence granted instead.

As Mehdi Khan’s appeal for the release was under hearing, it coincided with the Supreme Court’s suo motu notice on the issue relating to prisoners at risk and women as the Sindh High Court and Islamabad High Court had ordered release of under-trial prisoners amid expanding corona pandemic.

The Attorney General of Pakistan then recommended extending this benefit to persons suffering from ailment (physical and mental disability), under-trial prisoners of 55-year and above as well as to all women and juvenile. Only those involved in violence against women and children were excluded from the list. Not only SC ordered, Prime Minister Imran Khan also tweeted his directives, though limiting it to women alone.

“I have asked for immediate implementation of SC order 299/2020 for release of Under Trial women prisoners [and] convicted women prisoners who fulfil criteria of SC Order… I have also asked for immediate reports on foreign women prisoners [and] women on death row for humanitarian consideration,” he tweeted on September 2 this year.

That report has not been submitted as yet to the PM. The prison authorities have not informed the court that how many prisoners have been released in line with its directives, according to a report of Amnesty International which prepared it in collaboration with Justice Project Pakistan, an NGO working on jail reforms by highlighting the plight of prisoners especially those under trials languishing behind bars.

“In fact, at least 53,385 out of a total of 79,603 prisoners (67%) are currently under trial across Pakistan’s prisons,” said the report titled “Prisoners of Pandemic.” Also included among them are more than 1500 prisoners who are considered older.

Mehdi Khan was perhaps the oldest among them who died while his appeal was pending. Not only old-age prisoners are exposed to COVID-19 in crowded jails, women and children are also imprisoned. According to the 6th Report of the Federal Ombudsman, there were 1,208 women prisoners across prisons in April 2020. This number rose to 1,244 by September 2020.

As per the report by the Commission constituted by Islamabad High Court, there are 83 mothers with 90 children in various prisons of Punjab, 119 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. There are also 37 mothers with 50 children.

Izma Rao is one such prisoner. She was barely an adult when accused of murder in January 2015 and sentenced to death by a trial court. She has been in Kot Lakhpat Jail Lahore for six years now, waiting for decision on her high court appeal as she pleads innocence, according to her lawyer, Sana Farrukh of Justice Project Pakistan.

Izma is not alone. Her daughter, now 8-year-old, has spent her entire life behind bars with her mother. The child has asthma which requires treatment and medication. It leaves her susceptible to COVID-19, a prospect that has given Izma extreme anxiety this year.

Izma has been abandoned by her entire family and gets no visitors. Without any friends or family to send her money, medicine or goods for her child, this broken family of two lives in extreme difficulty in jail.

Prison conditions in Pakistan are notoriously unsanitary, overcrowded and disease-ridden. According to the Federal Ombudsman, the national overcrowding rate in prisons is 134%, with significantly higher percentages depending on the prison. For example, as of June 2020, Malir District Prison is at 205% capacity, Sialkot District Jail is at almost 225%, Karachi Central Jail is at 147% and Mianwali Central Jail is at 176% capacity. “Separating prisoners is not possible with the space available. About 100 prisoners are brought into the jail every day,” Additional Inspector General Prison Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Khalid Abbas, told Justice Project Pakistan.

“This overcrowding is caused by a number of factors, including police arrest practices and the high proportion of people held in pre-trial detention, following the courts’ reluctance to grant bail and to order alternative non-custodial sentences,” the report has noted. This overcrowding is also in stark contrast with medical facilities in jail. In Punjab, for example, there are only 42 medical officers for 45,699 prisoners. In Balochistan, there are nine medical officers for 2,070 prisoners. The prisons’ hospitals have an extremely limited number of beds, which means that only the most pressing illnesses get medical attention. In Punjab, most prisons have poorly equipped ambulances; around 10% of prisons have no ambulances at all. Isolated rooms within prison hospitals across the country are scarce.

In January 2020, a judicial inquiry commission led by the Ministry of Human Rights found that almost 2,400 prisoners in prisons around the country have pre-existing, chronic and contagious diseases such as hepatitis C, HIV and tuberculosis. In addition, there are 2,100 reported prisoners with physical ailments and 600 with mental disabilities. These numbers likely under-represent the reality, as many prisoners are likely to go undiagnosed due to the severe dearth of medical staff, resources and general indifference to the health of inmates, as reported by several prisoners who were interviewed for Justice Project Pakistan’s report.