LARKANA, June 19: The prisoners’ unrest in the Central Prison of Larkana continued over administration’s decision to stop visits by friends and family members of inmates.

The administration stopped the visits when the prisoners began a protest to put pressure on the administration to bring back their colleagues shifted to other jails and lock-ups of police.

They accused the administration of using coercive measures, including denial of medical facilities, and forcing them to vacate barracks to carry out an operation. But jail officials say that the barracks has to be vacated for repairs.

The Superintendent of Jail, Abdul Ghaffar Dahar, said on Sunday that no visitor was allowed to meet any prisoner because they had been refusing to give a count since June 8. When contacted on mobile phones, some of the prisoners said that in the name of repairing the barrack, the jail authorities had started shifting their colleagues to other jails. And those who are taken to courts do not return.

On June14, a group of prisoners, including Himmat Chandio, Sahib Mughairi, Manthar Mughairi and Ali Gul Mughairi, were shifted to Khairpur Jail where they were humiliated and their heads and moustaches were shaved-off, a prisoner Zahid Chandio said. Since June 8, Cable TV and gas connections had been cut and no doctor was visiting the barracks.

The unrest started when 60 prisoners, who had been taken to courts on June 8, did not did not return. They were kept in judicial lock- ups of Shikarpur, Shahdadkot and Qambar. Another 40 prisoners, Zahid Chandio said, did not return to jail after court hearing. He rejected administration’s allegation that prisoners had attacked jail officials.

But superintendent of jail claimed that doctors had been examining patients in his office, but a group of prisoners was creating unrest. He named Bashoo Shabrani, who is serving 80-year term, and other hardened criminals, of being behind the trouble.

He said he had no authority to send prisoners to judicial lock-ups. Only courts could do that.