PoJK activist highlights major security lapse behind Rawalakot prison break incident

London [UK], July 5 (ANI): Sardar Nasir Aziz Khan, an activist from Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) highlighted the major security lapses behind the recent Rawalakot prison break incident in which 20 criminals had escaped.

Khan in his statement, pointed out that this could be an internal job rather than being a mere strategy orchestrated by the prisoners.

In his statement, he mentioned that the prison of Rawalakot has been in a terrible condition for a long time and projects to replace it were stopped by the Pakistani administration.

Additionally, this is not the first prison break that has happened in the same area.

While speaking at an interview with London-based author, Shabir Choudhry, Khanthe PoJK activist claimed that “the Rawalakot Prison cannot be called a regular prison, it is rather a weak structure of 5-7 rooms and nothing else. It is nothing but an old building and had suffered a lot of damage during the floods of 2005 in 2007 the same Rawalakot prison witnessed a prison break where the prisoners were able to escape just by destroying a single wall.”

Khan further said, “The Pakistani authorities had promised to build another prison to replace this one and the land for the project also had been allotted, and the project had also begun, but it was stopped all of sudden”.

While pointing out a probable inside job regarding the prison break, Khan said that this prison was just supposed to handle prisoners of judicial custody and not hardcore criminals, because of its condition and capacity.

“Additionally, the day of escape was a holiday, so less number of defence personnel were present. Then all the prisoners were not in their barracks and were instead out on the verandah, and then allegedly supplies were made available to them like Lassi and red chilli powder which was used to escape the prison. How could all this happen at once?,” he said.

However, he also claimed, “During all this, a youngster who was merely at the wrong place at the wrong time or did not want escape with these criminals was allegedly killed by those escapees. However no clear investigation report is available to link both incidents. There is a video in which that boy could be seen sitting on the stairs in a wounded condition, but no one took him to the hospital”.

Further, he said, that he knows about the area personally from his days in the PoJK as it is near his hometown.

“A person can reach the nearest hospital by foot within 10 minutes, but I don’t know how this kid was not taken to the hospital to save his life,” he said.

When asked about who could have been the culprit of the youngster’s death by Shabir Choudhry, Khan stated that only the police could tell the truth about this incident.