LAHORE: As the jail authorities have reportedly kept PML-N’s Punjab president MNA Rana Sanaullah in ‘inhumane’ conditions, Maryam Nawaz believes his leaked picture behind bars is the handiwork of those who had humiliated her brother Hussain Nawaz by releasing his picture during his appearance before a joint inv­e­sti­gation team in the Panama Papers case.

Mr Sanaullah’s wife, Nabila, and some PML-N provincial lawmakers spent several hours outside the Camp Jail here on Friday, persuading the officials to provide the prisoner home-cooked food and medicines she had brought with her. However, on refusal, they protested and urged the authorities to let Mr Sanaullah have the home diet and medicines as he was a heart patient and anything could happen to him if he was denied these things.

“The jail authorities first refused to allow Mr Sanaullah’s counsel to see him. They asked him to bring a fresh order from the magistrate if he wants to meet him. Later, when we reached there to provide him food and medicines, the officials also flatly refused,” Rana Sheryar, son-in-law of Mr Sanaullah, told Dawn.

Family protests denial of home-cooked food, medicines to PML-N leader

“We kept persuading the jail authorities for a couple of hours, but they did not budge and finally we returned without giving him food and medicines. This is cruel and someone at the top should take notice of this,” he said.

Mr Sheryar said when he and his mother-in-law met the PML-N leader on Thursday, they found him so weak that he was finding it difficult to walk. “Mr Sanaullah told me that he had been kept in a small cell with no bed. He said he felt suffocated because of inadequate ventilation (in the cell). He said he was not given clean water to drink,” Mr Sheryar said, adding that the officials even refused to receive a mattress from him to provide it to his father-in-law.

“Mr Sanaullah is a parliamentarian but he is even being denied basic human rights in jail,” he lamented and vowed to fight legal battle to prove him (Sana) innocent.

The Anti-Narcotics Force had on Monday arrested Mr Sanaullah and allegedly seized 15kg narcotics from his car on way to Lahore from Faisalabad.

The PML-N said he was framed at the behest of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The PML-N expressed resentment over the leaking of Mr Sanaullah’s picture behind bars. It believed that the purpose of the leaked picture was to humiliate Mr Sanaullah on the pattern of Hussain Nawaz.

PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz endorsed a tweet of her party worker that said: “The story that began with the leaked picture of Hussain Nawaz even continues today, the leaked picture of Rana Sanaullah… Humiliation of civilians continues unabated.”

Maryam said: “Pakistan is our beloved country & the (Selected) people who are playing havoc with it are to be blamed, named and shamed.”

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2019