Jailed in luxury

That a convicted criminal enjoys his sentence in a private hospital is a mockery of justice. Shahrukh Jatoi had initially in 2013 received a death sentence in a murder case in Karachi – he was convicted of killing Shahzeb Khan in 2012; later that sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2019. It has been nearly ten years since he was charged in the murder case. Now it has been discovered, as put forward by a story in this publication, that Jatoi since 2019 has been living in various public and private hospitals rather than in Central Jail, where he was placed after his conviction. While the authorities have now moved him back to prison – on Jan 10, 2022 -- this episode raises some fundamental questions regarding rule of law in Pakistan. First: who managed to facilitate the alleged violation of the rules – and how? Second, what was the procedure for such an admission to hospital and that too for many months?

It is true that if a prisoner is ill there should be immediate attention to his or her medical needs. But how could one spend that long in hospital and that too without getting any notice from the authorities responsible? If the Sindh home department was responsible – as some reports have suggested – how could it do it without a proper court order or medical board’s report? If rule of law has to prevail in any society it has to prevail at all levels without any concessions to a privileged few. In contrast to Jatoi’s living arrangements the past 20-odd months, prisoners at the Central Jail live in crowded cells, eating poorly cooked food and suffering various violations of the Jail Manual because the prison staff is overwhelmed by the overcrowding at the jail, and by their own lack of training in managing the prisoners. Many are shackled, others serve times in solitary confinement, and many suffer regular bouts of torture, which as the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has reported in the past is endemic in Pakistan’s jails.

In countries such as Pakistan the mighty and the rich think that they can get away with any crime they commit, and in many case they do it with impunity. Unless this impunity that some people from the elite enjoy comes to an end, any rule of law will remain a pipe dream. Then there is a relatively lax judicial system which has only recently started taking some concrete measures to end this impunity that some privileged individuals and entities have been enjoying for long. Jail administration has a lot to do with how prisoners end up with varying degrees of treatment for the same sentence. A murder convict has to be treated as a murder convict and a petty criminal has to get the treatment in accordance with the crime. It is essential that all prisoners be treated alike, preferably without any mistreatment as per the Jail Manual but without the escape into near-luxury.