LAHORE: A prisoner was killed and four others were injured when two groups of inmates fought over food at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail. The Punjab Home Department has ordered an inquiry by three senior prison officers.
After the incident, IG Prisons Mian Salik Jalal said the fight broke out between two groups over langar after the jail kitchen was closed. Both groups used cutters and iron rods. The man killed, 42-year-old Ashraf Barkat, was being held in a murder case. He was taken to Lahore’s General Hospital, where doctors confirmed his death. The injured, including Falak Sher, who is being held in a narcotics case, are being treated at the same hospital. Two of them are said to be in critical condition.
A Home Department spokesperson said the Punjab Home Secretary had taken immediate notice of the incident and formed an inquiry committee comprising three DIGs: DIG Prisons Lahore Mohsin Rafiq, DIG Prisons Headquarters Shaukat Feroze and DIG Prisons Inspection Naveed Rauf. The committee has begun questioning the injured prisoners and jail staff. The spokesperson said those responsible would be identified and dealt with under the law.
On the Home Secretary’s instructions, IG Prisons Mian Salik Jalal and Additional Secretary Prisons Roman Borana went to General Hospital Lahore to oversee the treatment of the injured.
Kot Lakhpat police went to the hospital and began legal proceedings on a written complaint from the jail administration.
The questions the inquiry must answer
The most serious question is how cutters and iron rods got inside a maximum-security prison and how two armed groups were able to clash before guards intervened. The inquiry will also need to examine why the kitchen was closed and how food distribution is handled.
The committee is made up entirely of officers from the prisons department, which is investigating its own staff. In past killings at Kot Lakhpat, rights groups have called for independent judicial inquiries instead. After a blasphemy accused was shot dead inside the jail in 2002, human rights groups warned that an inquiry by a prison officer could become “another cover-up”.
Who is held at Kot Lakhpat
Kot Lakhpat, officially Central Jail Lahore, is Punjab’s best-known prison and currently holds several high-profile political prisoners.
Senior PTI leaders Dr Yasmin Rashid, Mian Mahmoodur Rasheed, Ejaz Chaudhry and Omar Sarfraz Cheema are serving 10-year sentences in May 9 cases. Their trials were held in a makeshift courtroom inside the jail. PTI social media activist Sanam Javed and her sister Falak Javed were also held in the jail in different cases.
Imran Khan’s three sisters, Aleema Khan, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, were detained under the Maintenance of Public Order law on September 20 and 21, ahead of PTI’s September 27 march, which was later postponed, and moved to Kot Lakhpat.
The jail has a long history of holding political figures. Ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was moved there in December 2018 after his conviction in the Al-Azizia case, and was kept in the same barrack where Asif Ali Zardari had been held in the 1990s. Its past inmates have also included Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Saad Hussain Rizvi and Hafiz Saeed.
A jail with a violent history
The incident is not the first killing of a prisoner inside Kot Lakhpat. In 2013, Indian death-row prisoner Sarabjit Singh, who was convicted over bomb attacks, was attacked with bricks by six prisoners and later died. Two prisoners were charged with his murder. At the time, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) condemned the attack and called for a thorough inquiry. Amnesty International reported that jail staff, including the head warden, were suspended for negligence and that Singh’s lawyer had warned the jail of death threats against him.
The latest death also comes weeks after other deaths in state custody in Lahore, including two women who died in Township police custody in August and the death of PTI leader Ijaz Satti after police custody last month.
Overcrowding
Kot Lakhpat was built in 1965 for 1,053 prisoners, but it was reported to hold more than 4,000 in 2023. Five new double-storey barracks for up to 2,000 inmates were added last year. Across Punjab, around 70,000 prisoners are held in 45 jails, and only about 16,000 of them have been convicted. Rights groups have repeatedly linked overcrowding to violence and poor conditions. In 2023, Human Rights Watch documented widespread deficiencies in healthcare in Punjab’s prisons.
The Punjab government has recently introduced a real-time digital dashboard to monitor inmates and security compliance in jails and has expanded its prisoner rehabilitation programmes. Today’s clash will test whether those systems are working in practice or are merely another social media post.
Human rights groups
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has repeatedly criticised how deaths in custody in Punjab are investigated.
In August, after two women, Amina and Anmol, died within hours of being taken into custody at Township police station in Lahore, an HRCP fact-finding report found serious inconsistencies in the official accounts of the circumstances, timing and cause of their deaths. Police had attributed the deaths to cardiac arrest. HRCP said police claims that the women were drug users were not supported by the available evidence.
In February, an HRCP report on the Crime Control Department’s encounter killings noted that the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Act 2022 requires the FIA to investigate every custodial death under the supervision of the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR). HRCP said it found no evidence that this procedure had been followed. In August, it also said that no FIA investigation under the 2022 Act had led to a conviction since the law was passed.
These calls for independent inquiries contrast with Wednesday’s probe, which is being run entirely by the prisons department’s own DIGs.
Separately, Amnesty International has criticised the detention of Imran Khan’s sisters at Kot Lakhpat. It called the targeting of family members of political parties and activists “a flagrant violation” of their rights to liberty, expression, association and peaceful assembly.
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