KARACHI: The provincial governments in Pakistan’s Sindh and Punjab provinces have announced remission in sentences for prisoners as a special concession on account of the upcoming Eid Al-Adha festival, official notifications released this week said.
Pakistani leaders traditionally announce sentence remissions for prisoners on religious festivals and other special occasions like the two Eid festivals and Independence Day. The remissions are intended as goodwill gestures to promote rehabilitation and allow selected inmates to reunite with their families during important national and religious holidays.
“Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha-1446 (2025), has approved a special remission of 120 days for convicted prisoners confined in various prisons and correctional facilities across Sindh Province,” the CM’s office said in a statement.
The special remission applies to all convicted prisoners “except for condemned prisoners and those convicted of serious offenses including murder, espionage, subversion, anti-state and terrorist activities, rape, kidnapping, robbery, dacoity, offenses, and financial embezzlement causing loss to the national exchequer.”
In Punjab, a special 90-day sentence remission was announced for 450 inmates.
The statement said 270 of the 450 prisoners would be released from Punjab’s jails and celebrate Eid with their families.
However, prisoners convicted of militancy, sectarianism, espionage, treason, anti-state activities, murder, rape, drug trafficking, robbery, kidnapping, financial embezzlement or causing loss to the national treasury, as well as those punished for violating jail rules within the past year, would not be eligible for the sentence remission.
Eid Al-Adha will be celebrated in Pakistan on Saturday, June 7.
