RAWALPINDI, Aug 8: Prison population in Pakistan has doubled in the last few years, turning the jails for their 89,546 inmates into hell rather than reformatories. Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail is packed with 6,195 prisoners — more than three times its designed capacity for 1,900. They live in inhuman and degrading conditions. Many are subjected to severe beatings and other ill-treatment.

Only 1,972 of them are undergoing punishment because they have been convicted of some crime. The rest 4,223 are suffering because their trial either has not ended or has yet to begin.

Declared guilty by law or not, each one of them is condemned to spend his or her days in severely overcrowded, filthy and poorly ventilated cells.

Prison authorities blame the rise in prison population on what they described to Dawn as “routine use of pre- trial detention, even for non-violent offences”.

Once transferred from police custody to prison, many are left to languish for years awaiting trial in cramped, dimly lit and poorly ventilated cells. There they face hunger, disease and sometimes death.

Statistics show 54,434 prisoners are languishing in Punjab jails, 21,762 in Sindh, 9,014 in the North-West Frontier Province, 3,503 in Balochistan, 356 in Northern Areas and 4,779 in Azad Kashmir. There are 7,527 condemn prisoners altogether in the country’s jails.

Adiala Jail has 152 convicted and 116 under-trial female prisoners. It also has 152 foreign national prisoners waiting for trial.

Adiala inmates constantly complain of harsh and brutal prison conditions, especially of overcrowding, filth and stinking toilets. Most prison barracks smell terrible and lice, bedbugs and fleas abound.

No wonder someone, sometime loses self-control and tempers fly among the prisoners and with the prison wardens. That amounts to breaking prison rules and the troublemaker is dispatched to the ‘punishment cell’ — a dreadful place and yet overcrowded.

“It is unimaginable how all those thrown into the cell fit in there. They don’t have even space to sit down comfortably,” one inmate who had suffered the ‘punishment cell’ told Dawn.

Several prisoners were allegedly beaten by prison staff following a search for narcotics, cell phones and illegal weapons. Prison regulations prohibit beating of prisoners.

A senior official of the jail confirmed the search but denied that anyone was beaten.

“Yes, a search was carried out after information that there was narcotics in the jail but no narcotics was found - only two mobile phone chargers and some sort of hand made cutters,” said the official.

Beaten or not, Adiala Jail lacks adequate medical care even for common diseases. Just two male doctors and six dispensers are supposed to look after the health of over 6,000 prisoners.