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profile murder cases, were acquitted. It took firefighters more than two hours
to douse the flames, which injured one prisoner.
In July, 15 jail wardens were taken hostage by detainees at the Hyderabad
Central Jail. The prisoners were protesting lack of basic facilities. One prisoner
was killed and seven injured in the police operation that ensued.
Two groups in a prison in Lakki Marwat clashed in early January. Eight
prisoners sustained injuries and were hospitalized.
Jails, prisoners and disappearances
Deaths and injuries in prisons
According to media monitoring by HRCP, 59 detainees died in the custody
of prison authorities in 2012, another 81 were injured and 10 incidents of
alleged torture of detainees were reported.
A convict at a Sheikhupura jail was beaten up so brutally by the prison
guards that it resulted in the tearing of his stomach lining. The victim’s brother
filed a complaint against the prison authorities. A district judge ordered
registration of cases against a deputy superintendent of police and some
wardens.
Violence and clashes among detainees also resulted in fatalities and injuries
to prisoners. In Central Jail, Sukkur, violence erupted among two groups of
prisoners in late February. One of the prisoners, Dhani Bux Korai, died after
being hit by a gas cylinder. The Sindh High Court chief justice ordered an
inquiry.
An under-trial prisoner, Basharat Hussain, was stabbed to death by a fellow
detainee in a barrack of Karachi Central Prison in late March. The deceased
was the deputy director of the Malir Development Authority and had been
facing corruption charges. The brother of the deceased claimed that Basharat
had been tortured to death by police authorities, a claim that the police denied.
Three people including two prisoners died in Kot Lakhpat Jail under
mysterious circumstances in March. The official explanation was that they
had suffered a serious protracted illness but the families of the deceased as
well as sources in the prison department termed this explanation as bogus.
They alleged that the jail authorities received illegal gratification from a rival
group and administered poison in the drinking water of the deceased. The
Home Department Punjab ordered an inquiry and report from the inspector
general of prisons.
In May, media reports emerged of torture of five men held in a Gilgit
prison. The men had originally been imprisoned for organising protests on
behalf of victims of displacement. They were tortured apparently on charge
of leading protests in the prison to call for addressing the problems of the
detainees. Civil society organisations said that the charges against the five men