Times
of India: Patna: Monday, 25 August 2014.
A fortnight
ago, an undertrial prisoner from Samastipur jail was brought to Patna Medical
College Hospital in a comatose condition, apparently the result of severe
beating. The jail authorities said the prisoner was "beaten up by police
officials" when he was trying to escape, while the IG (prison) held that
he was assaulted for theft by people before his arrest.
The prisoner,
35-year-old Amarjeet Rai, was arrested by the GRP on the charge of stealing
railway scrap and was taken to Samastipur jail after being produced in court,
jail superintendent Manoj Kumar had told the media. He said the policemen who
escorted Rai to the jail beat him up when he tried to escape.
About 10 days
ago, police foiled an attempt by prisoners to take control of the divisional
jail in Sitamarhi. They fired about 50 rounds to bring the situation under
control even as the prisoners pelted stones and broke the windowpanes of SP
Nawal Kishore Singh's vehicle. Sashastra Seema Bal and CRPF personnel were
rushed to assist the district police. The SP said two jawans were injured in
brickbatting and at least four prisoners were injured in the firing. The riot
was triggered off by prisoners who were resisting the move to shift hardcore
Maoists, Santosh Jha and Samrat Choudhary, from the prison to Buxar and Gaya,
respectively.
Bihar has 56
jails at present that includes eight central jails, 31 district jails and 17
sub-jails. These jails have a capacity to house 33,119 prisoners, and even
though one comes across the occasional positive human interest story in these
prisons, there are several indications that all is not well.
A PUCL report
on Prisons in Bihar, published by the Bihar state unit, attempts to provide a
picture of the state of Bihar's prisons from a human rights and civil liberty
perspective. One plods through the 60-page publication by Jitendra Choubey and
Manish Kumar, which attempts to tackle several issues but doesn't get around to
much, partly because of the pontification. "The fact that the prisoners,
convicted or otherwise, are citizens of India entitled to fundamental rights
did not make any difference to the rulers of the Indian republic who stepped
into the shoes of the colonial rulers and continue to treat the prisoners with
contempt as their foreign predecessors," write Choubey and Kumar.
It's a sour,
dour vinegary book that makes some telling points: Bihar prisons are the worst
nightmares. The inspectors general of prisons (IGPs) avoid conducting
inspections. The IGPs conducted only seven inspections during 2005-2010 in a
sample of 15 prisons, when there should have been 101, had the rules been
followed. The jails lack adequate toilets, drinking water facilities and
sanitation.
Overcrowding
varied from 100% to 600%. "Not only are the prisoners denied proper food
to which they are entitled, they are denied even sleep at night due to lack of
space in their wards. In the overcrowded jails, only those who enjoy the
patronage of the ?dabang' of his ward has the privilege of lying down and
sleeping. The others have to manage somehow or the other: sitting and
dozing," say the authors.
Medical
facilities are dismal, with only 28 serving doctors for 107 posts, 7
compounders against 101 posts, and 12 ?dressers' against 101 posts. Some 518
prisoners died in different jails of the state between 2005-2010. The report
dwells on the outdated prison manual, but ignores an important fact: The Bihar
government on December 11, 2012 approved a new jail manual, replacing the
existing 88-year-old prison guidelines formulated in 1924.
Perhaps they
relied too much on archives, and gathering information via the RTI route, even
as prison reforms, no matter how limited, were unfolding around them!
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