October 26, 2025
By Xari Jalil
LAHORE
Sohail Yafat’s time behind bars may have ended a long time ago, and he is living a happy life now with his family, but his eyes still have that faraway look, as if locked away from the world.
The 10 year long ordeal when he was framed in a murder case, changed his entire life, and he remembers everything that happened not just with him, but with the others to, with crystal clear memory as if it was only yesterday.
The jail insulates not just the prisoners, but also the wardens from the world outside. A prison warden may not be a very powerful man in the outside world, but inside he wields incredible power over the inmates. This kind of hierarchy and an economy typical only to a prison creates a parallel universe. And in this universe, torture in many forms is a regular thing – even accepted to a large extent.
Sohail was arrested in 2001, under false charges. After undergoing some dreadful torture while in police custody and by the Crimes Investigation Department (CID), Sohail was first shifted to the notorious Sahiwal jail as an undertrial prisoner and then after he was convicted to the Kot Lakhpat (Lahore Central) Jail. It took 10 years for him to be eventually exonerated.
“There’s a special sound that comes when the warden drags his bamboo cane against the bars of the jail cell,” says Sohail, remembering the daily routine. “Then we used to hear his voice saying, “Get up you lazy fools, make groups of four.” He laughs as he recalls the absurdity of the situation.
“I’ve been through this – the laughter is a kind of a defense mechanism. You kind of snap after some time when the pain becomes too much – then you figure out that the pain itself become a cure for the pain. This is how you learn to handle it.”
Role of the prisoners
Sohail’s day like any other prisoner’s day consisted of work. There were people distributed in the kinds of work they did – some did the cleaning, some the cooking. But there were also special prisoners and everyone saw they were the top dogs. They sat in the yard grooming themselves while everyone else worked to the bone trying to make their time in prison easy. These special prisoners were obviously patronized by the prison administration because of the money they paid them in order to escape any kind of work and to spend a more privileged time inside. They were also the last to be locked.
“The time for lock-up at dusk, is a very stressful time for the prisoners, because once again you have to go back to the dank cells, and be locked up, and at that time we used to see from behind the bars these special prisoners walking around in the yard,” says Sohail. “They did get locked up eventually but they got extra time outside.”
Torture
In those days Sahiwal Prison was known among prisoners as the ‘Kalay Pani Wali Jail’. The torture meted out to the prisoners was regular too.
“It begins with the mulahiza (inspection), when the new comers are sitting together and they are asked questions about their background. The authorities bark questions at them, treating them as convicts, whereas it is yet to be decided whether they are guilty or not. You cannot treat an accused the way you treat a convicted person,” he says. “Two men stood on either side holding your arms and there was a third man who slapped us on the back of our heads each time a question was asked. Imagine the feeling an innocent man had when he was admitted in jail.”
He also mentions how often prisoners are shackled, according to the category of their crimes – but also some times when the warden or prison in charge happens to have a grudge against them. “Shackles are the worst form of torture today in the 21st century, these should be banned. They are violative of basic human rights,” says Yafat. “They have shackles on prisoners’ feet even when they are asleep in the cells, in the winters, when they get cold as ice, in fact even in death. We recently received the body of a prisoner who had died but was still shackeled and yet we were not given the key because we needed to follow red tape to get orders from the right people in order to have them removed. Eventually we got our own blacksmith and had to cut them off. Imagine the humiliation.”
Today Sohail Yafat works in an organization called the Justice Project (JPP) where he works hard for prisoners’ rights. He lobbies for basic human decency to be given to all inmates, rather than they be treated like animals, in the manner of what was typically done during Colonial times.
He also runs his own small NGO called Ray of Hope where he hopes to rehabilitate former convicts so that they can find their place in society.
Watch Sohail Yafat’s video to know more about his time in jail and how he is managing today.