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| Meeting with daughters bring joy for incarcerated woman |
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Monday, May 12, 2008
Rawalpindi
Oblivious to the significance of the day dedicated to mothers, Hikmat Jan waited impatiently for May 11 to dawn. For the past one week she kept a track of each passing moment leading to this day. On this date her shelter bound daughters were to visit her in prison.
Though this meeting was pre fixed by her lawyer, she dared to re-confirm it from the hotheaded barrack in charge.
Following her stern and impersonal validation, she had a request to make: Half a kilo rice and a chicken from her beadwork saving. While keeping a strict tab on the clock Hikmat Jan cooked chicken ‘biryani’ in one corner of the prison barrack. It was a silent celebration of a family reunion. The ‘mulaaqaat’ took place at Adiala Jail this morning and lasted for 90 minutes.
It was specially arranged at the request of Hikmat Jan, as she could not meet her daughters, Shabeena Naz, 13 and Amina Naz 11 in the past five weeks. The girls were accompanied by their mother’s legal counsel provided by Women Aid Trust, an organisation, which gives legal assistance and life skills to prison inmates in six major detention centres in the country.
Hikmat Jan is a convicted prisoner. She was arrested on charge of killing her first husband five years ago. Six male members of her family were also arrested on the same charge. While the rest were freed on bail, Hikmat Jan was convicted two years ago and is serving a life sentence. At the time of the occurrence of the incident her girls were five and seven years old. After their mothers arrest they were uprooted from the family setting on the order of the local magistrate and dumped at Kashana, a public shelter for girl children in Rawalpindi.
Initially the girls were very disturbed. They would cry all the time and insist on going back to their home recalls the shelter in charge. It was very traumatic for them to come to terms with the fact that their mother was in jail and inaccessible. The displacement and separation from their mothers can take a serious toll on the children left behind, said WAT General Secretary Shaheena Khan. She mentioned cases of children suffering from a host of psychological problems, from shame to depression to abandonment issues. She said that in many cases mothers were primary or sole care givers to their children and their incarceration can destroy a family.
Incarceration deprives a mother of all her parental rights. No phone, no letter and no visits.
‘The News’ talked to several imprisoned men and women in Adiala Jail. While men wanted to be freed women talked about their children. They said that separation from children was the most difficult part of their punishment.
Ninety per cent women in local prisons are mothers. More than half have not met their children during their imprisonment. Amina and Shabeena are perhaps better off than many. They spent some time with their mother and returned to the shelter with a stronger sense of bonding.
Mother’s day is an occasion that marks the hope and love we draw from the institution of motherhood... a day to celebrate individuals who nurture and cherish us each day of their lives. It is also a day to remember those mothers who sit in the gloomy confines of their jail cells and dream of their children, waiting wistfully for the moment they will be reunited.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
