Islamabad to have state-of-the-art prison facility by June 2020

ISLAMABAD: The federal capital, which has its own police, administrative and judicial system, is without a prison and Islamabad-based prisoners are being kept in the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi.

However, now a 90 acre of land for the Islamabad Model Prison has been acquired in Sector H-16 of the federal capital.

The project would cost the national exchequer Rs3.9 billion (Dirham 89.19 million) and will have capacity to accommodate around 2,000 prisoners.

This has been revealed in a report submitted by the Federal Ombudsman in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

So far, according to the report, Rs1.1 billion (Dirham 25.147 million) has been released and utilised, whereas work on the administration block, boundary wall, male barracks, etc, is under way. Expected date for completion of the project is June 30, 2020, it said.

The much delayed facility will have all the modern facilities like separate blocks for women, juvenile, drug addicts and prisoners facing conviction in heinous crimes.

The apex court has taken a suo motu notice about conditions of inmates in the country’s prisons due to overcrowding.

The hearing was initiated to consider and address the plight and miseries of women prisoners.

The Federal Ombudsman was tasked with making recommendations to improve conditions in prisons and redress the grievances of prisoners.

The report submitted by the Federal Ombudsman informed the country’s top court that a total of 80,145 inmates are currently housed in 98 prisons of the four provinces against a sanctioned capacity of 56,495 — almost 42 per cent more than the capacity.

The report submitted through senior counsel Hafiz Ahsaan Ahmad Khokhar on Thursday said that of the 80,145 inmates, 45,423 were detained in 42 jails in Punjab, 16,739 in Sindh, 15,969 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 2,014 in Balochistan. The report stated that these prisons had 1,135 juvenile prisoners as well as 24,280 convicts and 51,710 under-trial prisoners.

Work on state-of-the-art model prison in Islamabad has been delayed for years, and earlier in January this year, Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan had asked the departments concerned for their input to remove impediments in the completion of the model jail project in Islamabad.

Last year, the then interior minister Ahsan Iqbal had inaugurated the project but it has been facing delays.