It is often said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. This statement was starkly illustrated in October 2022, when the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) conducted an inquiry based on a complaint of custodial torture in Adiala Jail Rawalpindi filed before the Islamabad High Court (IHC).

The NCHR report uncovered numerous complaints of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment suffered at the hands of jail authorities. Out of 35 inmates who recorded their statements, 26 prisoners (74 per cent) alleged various forms of torture and inhumane treatment. Every single inmate (100 per cent) spoke about financial extortion for accessing genuine facilities available at the jail.

There was little to no oversight by the then Oversight Committee and over the past five years only one prison official has been dismissed for violating human rights – a mere dispenser at the jail. At that point, Pakistan had no substantive law criminalizing torture.

Today, in compliance with its domestic and international commitments, and strong lobbying by civil society and the NCHR, Pakistan now has a standalone law on torture: the ‘Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment)........

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