Ever since US and Pakistan disturbed the tribal area bordering Afghanistan, a blood dimmed tide is loosened up on Pakistan. And the results, for sure, are the suicide bombings and the militant outrage that left thousands dead. But even gruesome is the fact that those who died were, of course, unfortunate but more unfortunate were those innocents who didn’t wish to die in prisons for the crimes they were victims of. Prisons gutted with innocents are not difficult to imagine in a country where there is military dictatorship. And it’s always bad to know that the prisons are the actual replica of what Pakistan is, particularly after Musharraf took over the reign. Like the other thousand cases, my fellow classmate is the one closest to me who at once went missing after Karachi bombings and his family members and friends were clueless of his whereabouts for the next four months. However, one day he was thrown out of a police van bare feet and handed over with some money and strict warnings for not to open his mouth. Spontaneous outburst of joy and shock was obvious for all the friends and family members to see him after four months. Shocked because he was too feeble, pale and didn’t talk to anybody for weeks altogether, however, marks on his back spoke for him. It was after three weeks when he spoke and we came to know the whole thing about his going missing four moths ago. And his saga of misery was more dreadful than you and I can expect. He told us how Pakistan police kept him in custody and hung him upside down for remand thus forcing him to confess being a conspirator in Karachi bombings. It reminds me of the democracy and freedom that have been hung up side down and beaten with military baton to reckon its power and influence. He narrated his painful story, though in fear of being observed, of those four months in which brutality was a frequent occurrence. How he, like many others, was made to stand for hours and how happy he felt when the police told him that he is the conspirator in bombings and will be executed next morning. Death is perhaps what an innocent can crave for when he suffers more than death pain for some crime that he never did. But to his surprise, eventually he was freed next morning. The student of literature is back with his beloved books, but he is not the same cheerful and enthusiastic man as he used to be. And it won’t be wrong to say [Modifying Robert Browning’s lines]that God’s not in His heaven, all’s wrong with Pakistan. And reasons are many than a few that we see or come across everyday. US plans, Musharraf’s dual face comes to fore, Pakistan burns, and consequences for us - our stability, our integrity are really tied up with what happens in the tribal region. A saga of desperation that began with US’s Afghan invasion, comes to Pakistan, and ends nowhere. In reverberation, we all witness the moribund state and humanity fading behind the bars. This story represents the macrocosm in microcosm and whatever happened with my friend is happening with thousands of innocents languishing in Pakistani prisons for no fault of their own.