Former Pak PM Sharif Denied Aide in Jail, Told to Maintain Room on His Own​

Team Udayavani, Jan 3, 2019, 9:06 AM IST

Islamabad: Pakistan’s beleaguered former premier Nawaz Sharif has to maintain his jail room on his own as the Punjab province government refused to provide him a prisoner who could serve as his assistant, according to a media report.

Sharif has been serving a seven-year jail term in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills graft case and being a former prime minister he is entitled to better facilities including an orderly who is usually another prisoner lodged in the same jail. 

Punjab’s inspector general of prisons Shahid Saleem Beg said on Wednesday that Punjab government decided that it could not provide a prisoner to Sharif who could serve as his aide and that he would have to maintain his room on his own, The Dawn reported.

Speaking to media personnel in the presence of Punjab Governor Chaudhry Sarwar at the Governor House, the prisons chief said Sharif’s case was highly sensitive and he could not be allowed to go outside his barracks in the prison.

However, he later clarified to the daily that Sharif had not been put to any rigour, adding that the manual allowed elderly inmates certain concessions on that count.

An anti-corruption court in Pakistan on December 24 sentenced the ousted PM to seven years in jail in the Al-Azizia Steel Mills graft case but acquitted him in the Flagship Investments case, concluding a series of three court cases against the Sharif family in the high-profile Panama Papers case.

The Al-Azizi Steel Mill case was about setting up steel mills in Saudi Arabia allegedly with corruption money.