A Sindh government plan to install cellphone jammers in prisons across the province has hit a snag thanks to the lethargy of the federal information technology ministry, which has not approved the project despite a passage of about nine months, it has emerged.
The Sindh home department wanted to install cellphone jammers on the premises of jails in the province in an attempt to restrict communications between inmates and their associates outside.
In February, the Sindh home secretary wrote a letter to the federal IT secretary to get necessary permission for the installation of cellphone jammers in the prisons.
Well-placed sources said the IT ministry had constituted a committee comprising all stakeholders to finalise the process. However, this didn`t yield any positive results and the issue was stalled, they added.
“Although we have done our homework, completed all pre-requisite formalities and even had allocated funds for the installation for jammers, we still await a no-objection certificate from the federal government,” said Sindh prisons chief Ghulam Qadir Thebo.
Mr Thebo told Dawn that about a week back the authorities at the Karachi Central Prison transferred a high-profile criminal allegedly associated with the Lyari gang warfare, Haji Laloo, to the Sukkur jail on reports that he could have been involved in some of the targeted killings in the city. However, Laloo approached court against his transfer and the court summoned the jail authorities over the issue.
While local investigators suspected that some of the sectarian killings in the city might have been planned in prison, the prisons chief maintained that if the law-enforcement agencies had some sort of evidence against the inmates regarding their alleged involvement in the targeted killings in the city or any other crime, “there is no hitch in lodging an FIR against them”.
He said the law-enforcement agencies could also question the inmates in jail as well.
The use of cellphones by high-profile inmates from jails is no more a secret, as the jail authorities had conceded that in some cases, prisoners, while in jail, had been found involved in crimes such as extending threats of kidnapping for ransom through mobile phones.
Two days after the Mumbai terror attacks, on Nov 28, 2008 a hoax caller pretending to be then Indian Foreign Minister Parnab Mukherji threatened President Asif Ali Zardari with war, leading to the Pakistan military being put on high alert. The same caller tried to get in touch with the real Pranab Mukherjee and then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by claiming he was President Zardari but was unable to get through to either.
A year after the Mumbai attacks, the Pakistani media revealed that the hoax caller was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who used a cellphone smuggled into his prison cell, made the calls using a British SIM card from the safety of his prison cell in the Hyderabad jail. After the source of the hoax calls became known, intelligence agents confiscated Omar Sheikh`s illegal phones and SIM cards. In a subsequent search of the Hyderabad jail, the authorities seized several SIM cards and some handsets from the high-profile inmate Mr Sheikh. Subsequently, Omar Sheikh was transferred to the Karachi central prison from the Hyderabad jail.
The detection of this high-profile incident had forced the jail authorities to install cellphone jammers on the premises of prisons and they approached the provincial home department, which wrote the letter to the IT ministry.
The letter reads: “Government of Sindh is contemplating to install jammer in prisons to restrict use of mobile phones for security reasons. Funds have also been allocated for this purpose. Use of mobile phones by prisoners is a violation of prison rules. In some cases, prisoners, while in the jail have been found involved in offences like extending threats of kidnapping for ransom through mobile phones, in collaboration with their associates outside jail. Search operations inside jails for recovery of mobile phones from prisoners have been resulting in riots and disturbances in prisons. Hence, it necessitates installing jammer to restrict the use of mobile phones within the periphery of jail premises. The whole exercise is being carried out in collaboration and with advise of PTA [Pakistan Telecommunication Authority] so that no disturbance is caused to the mobile networks in operations around the jail,” the letter concluded.
A similar letter addressed to the federal IT secretary was also written by Mr Thebo in April.
Source: Dawa.com
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