Prisons are parallels of the world in which they exist; its evils, its injustice, its inequities are all magnified and underscored in miniature and microcosm in the world behind bars.

The dark recesses of Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail constitute such a place where a Pakistan mired in lawlessness makes its pretenses of justice and punishment.

In this barred and locked up representation of the country, a condemned man is king, judge, arbiter of right and wrong.

Mumtaz Qadri is also a killer.

In 2011, employed as a guard, he gunned down Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer. His victim’s crime, Qadri the killer proudly proclaimed while blood still stained his hands, was to visit and speak up for a poor, imprisoned Christian woman who had been accused of blasphemy.

Footprints: Mumtaz Qadri mosque, memorials to our misdeeds

That was three years ago, but from inside Adiala prison, Mumtaz Qadri continues to dole out death sentences, of which he is still sole judge and jury. So complete appears his control, so unquestioned his elevation to punisher rather than punished that it seems he can use the prison guards to carry out the punishments he decides must be doled out.

As an internal investigation revealed this week, Mohammad Yousuf, a guard who had been deployed to watch over Qadri became the latest tool with which this prison king wielded his wrath. In this case, it took just two weeks to wash over any qualms Yousuf may have had.

At the end of two weeks, Yousuf, a guard, and a member of the Elite Force walked into the barracks where blasphemy convict Mohammad Asghar and blasphemy accused Pastor Zafar Bhatti were being housed. They were his appointed targets. Once inside, Yousuf shot Asghar, a 70-year-old man with paranoid schizophrenia.