Lahore - Farhat Khan, 64, former Joint Secretary of the Election Commission of Pakistan devours the dahi bhalay placed before her, with a spoon quivering in her hands.

Her hair is cropped short. She smiles. It is a strange and permanent smile.

“I spent half a decade like a prisoner in that mental hospital,” she says.

She looks small and frail, sinking into a couch at the house of human rights activist Ayesha Mumtaz Bhatti who took her case up on humanitarian grounds, and with whom she is currently living after being abandoned by her own family.

It was due to Bhatti’s efforts that Khan was released from the Punjab Institute of Mental Health, where she was forcibly held for five years. In 2011, she was admitted to the hospital by Ali Raza Bhutta, her nephew who is currently serving as Secretary Finance at the Finance Department, KPK.

The matter surfaced before the public when a Lahore High Court judge took up the habeas corpus petition filed by Bhatti against the administration of the hospital for illegally detaining Ms. Khan and the court ordered them to set her free.

“Why have you held a woman in detention when she is completely fine?” the judge asked the medical superintendent present in court.

“Her nephew got her admitted and then never came back to take her home,” the medical officer replied.

“She is free,” the judge thundered, “and may go to any place of her choice.”

The Punjab Institute of Mental Health has the capacity to hold 1,400 patients. At present, there are 1,110 patients admitted at five different wards out of which 333 have been abandoned by their families, according to a hospital official who refused to be named.

According to PIMH executive director Dr Nasir Mahmood, “It is very common that people provide us with fake addresses when they get their family members admitted to the hospital. After they leave, we fail to trace them out,” he said.

“Why do they do this? Surely for nefarious motives,” he adds. “People refuse to sign receiving papers, they refuse to take their family members back despite recovery, and subsequently, those patients lead their whole lives here,” he says. “There are many reasons people do this—and surely, obtaining property illegally is one of them.”

According to Dr Muhammad Arif, a psychiatrist at Ganga Ram Hospital, the possibility of fake reports on mental illness cannot be ruled out.

Farhat Khan alleges that her detention at the hospital was also a land grabbing ploy by her nephew, to obtain the only property she had in her name at the time of her retirement: a one kanal plot in LDA.

“My nephew simply disowned me,” says Ms. Khan.

“The attendants would bathe me out in the open, in front of all the other women. It was humiliating,” she says in a quiet voice, looking at her hands. Her fingers are rotting with a fungal infection she picked up at the hospital.

Dr Zulfiqar, her psychiatrist consultant, says she was initially diagnosed with symptoms of schizophrenia, but these were controlled by medication. “Ms Khan was fine on her medication, but no-one came back for her.”

Ali Raza Bhutta did not respond to phone calls despite repeated attempts by The Nation.

On May 14, 2015, engineer Abraiz Naeem, 52, ran away from PIMH with the help of a friend, Syed Hamid Shah, and later approached the LHC to seek action against his own wife and the administration of the hospital.

Engineer Abraiz alleges that Dr Nasir Mahmood took money to the tune of Rs 300,000 from his wife Salma and other relatives to declare him mentally ill. The Nation could not independently verify this allegation, and Salma could not be reached for comment.

Dr Nasir Mahmood denies any allegations of corruption against him.

Founded in 1900 under the name, “Lunatic Asylum,” the hospital was spread over 172 acres, now reduced to 66 acres with housing schemes and institutions like Punjab Institute of Cardiology having gradually eaten up over a hundred acres marked for carrying out the rehabilitation of the mentally disabled.

Sarfraz Bargatt, the lawyer who fought Khan’s case, says the officials of PIMH were unable to submit any reports in court to prove whether or not she was definitively mentally unfit.

The court also ordered the Punjab Health Secretary to hold an inquiry into the matter and submit a report. Both the inquiry and the report are pending.

Meanwhile, Farhat Khan, a retired Grade-20 officer of Pakistan, and hundreds others like her, abandoned, humiliated and languishing at PIMH, continue to await justice at the mercy of families who never come back.

                 –Editing by Amal Khan