Indian
Express: Pune: Friday, 19 September 2014.
The lawyer of
the State Transport bus driver, Santosh Mane, who has been awarded capital
punishment for mowing down nine persons in Pune two years ago, has alleged that
an RTI application seeking details about the medication of his client while in
jail remained unanswered by the Yerawada Central Prison authorities.
Stressing
that the desired information could have substantiated Mane’s insanity plea, his
lawyer Dhananjay Mane said the death penalty awarded by the Bombay High Court
would be soon challenged in the Supreme Court.
Mane, who had
ran over nine persons while driving a State Transport bus on January 25, 2012,
was handed out death sentence by a local court in April last year. The Bombay
High Court, on September 9, confirmed the punishment, turning down his insanity
plea.
Speaking to
Newsline, Dhananjay Mane said his client’s brother had filed an application
under the RTI Act with the jail authorities seeking what medication Mane was
receiving in the jail.
“Janak Mane,
Santosh Mane’s elder brother, had filed an RTI application on September 17 last
year. He received an acknowledgment receipt but never got desired information.
The applicant could not follow up his application as per laid down procedure in
the RTI Act due to personal commitments,” he said.
The lawyer,
while quoting Janak, said Mane was being given “a minimum of three-four
tablets” on a daily basis in the Yerawada jail during his trial.
“Santosh Mane
was given medication for mental illness during trial, but this information was
concealed despite filing an RTI query, simply to avoid potential impact on the
court proceedings. We even tried to bring this fact before the judiciary but to
no avail,” said Dhananjay Mane.
He said the
response to the RTI query considered together with other two medical reports
would have added weight to the insanity plea. One of these reports was based on
an examination conducted on the day of the incident that observed Mane needed
psychiatric observation as he complained of hallucinations and a feeling of
persecution. The other report was submitted by a panel of psychiatrists from
the Yerawada Mental Hospital after 10 days of observation, stating that the
“possibility of a psychiatric illness could not be ruled out”.
Yogesh Desai,
superintendent of the Yerawada Central Prison, said he had no knowledge about
any RTI application being filed made by Santosh Mane’s brother.
“The public
information office primarily looks after the disposal of RTI applications
received. Since no first appeal was said to have been made, senior authorities
do not have any knowledge about the application made by Mane’s brother. Also,
we just had routine transfers at the information office. We need to check
details of the RTI application concerned,” he added.
Additional
Director General (Prisons) Meeran Borwankar could not be reached for comments.
Meanwhile,
Mane’s lawyer said he was hopeful of getting “justice” for his client in the
apex court. “No doubt he committed the gory crime, but Santosh Mane did it
because of his unsound mind. The killing of unknown people was an act of insane
mind. It would have been a different case if he had killed his duty bosses or
known colleagues out of rage,” he argued.
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