Rehmat Afridi being tortured in jail, says son
LAHORE- Chief Editor of the National dailies Frontier Post and Maidan Rehmat Shah Afridi is being severely tortured in the Lahore Centrel Jail in Kot Lakhpat here, director The Frontier Publications Jalil Afridi revealed on October 19, 2002.
“My father Rehmat Shah Afridi is being severely tortured by the Lahore Centrel Jail, Kot Lakhpat, authorities for the last four months,” Rehmat’s son writes in his letter circulated to the editors of all national dailes.
Pointing out that the act of publishing of some stories in his newspapers prompted the then authorities to register a concocted and fabricated case against his father, Jalil Afridi said that The Frontier Publications had never been blamed for blackmailing or taking any benefit from any political government.
The son of a chief-editor of two national dailies said that since last four months a criminal minded and corrupt Superintendent Afzal Gujjar took the charge of Lahore Centrel Jail and turned the whole place into his fief.
“My father’s mattress has been taken away and he is forced to sleep on a bare floor with just a plain sheet on it; he has got no pillow to lay his head on; he is forced to wear jail clothes, although people in his block with lower jail status are wearing private clothes; his meeting with every friend, relative and colleague have been banned,” Jalil Afridi told something about the miseries of his father and added that the man was still continuing with the publishing of his two newspapers by disposing of a lot of his property.
The Frontier Publications director Jalil Afridi described the Jail Superintendent Afzal Gujjar as the responsible for all this havoc being played unabated with Rehmat Shah Afridi.
Accusing the jail authorities for not providing health facilities to his father, Jalil warned that if any serious damage occurred to his father the entire responsibility would lie with the Jail Superintendent Afzal Gujjar.
In his letter pointing out nine different aspects of the whole issue, Rehmat Shah Afridi’s son Jalil Afridi continued that Afzal Gujjar had placed his father in a cell next to the cell where prisoners are kept for the last ten days of their lives prior to the execution of their death sentence.
Locked up in a 8×10 feet cell, he said, Rehmat Shah Afridi had not been allowed to come out of his cell for the last 4 months despite the fact that other prisoners were given the facility twice a day without being hand-cuffed.
The last two points of the letter of Jalil Afridi dealt with the corruption record of Jail Superintendent Afzal Gujjar and narrated the story as to how the member of a lower-middle class family rose to the millions in a few years.
Substantiating the great services of his father to this nation, Jalil said that they did not intend to ask for a reward or even a certificate for the same but a simple thing that was to transfer of him to the Peshawar Jail so that his friends and family easily could have met with him.
Jalil Afridi said that he had filed a writ petition with the Lahore High Court against the brutalities of the Afzal Gujjar towards Rehamt Shah Afridi. Punjab Prisons bosses were tried to contact for their comments but no one seemed to be ready for giving official version.
However, a letter of Prisons Department revealed that he had already recommended the transfer of Rehmat Shah to the Peshawar Jail from Lahore Jail. On other hand, some prescriptions of different doctors enclosed with the letter also revealed the state of affairs with the chief-editor of Urdu Daily Maidan and English Daily Frontier Post.
Source: The News
Date:10/20/2002
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