M A I N   N E W S

From Behind Bars — I
A Tribune Investigation
More women resorting to crime, jails add to trauma
No jail in Punjab has a permanent psychiatrist on board
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 1
She grew up as a timid girl, tending to routine jobs at her home. Trained to take orders, execute them well and never ask for anything in return, she reeled in neglect all her life. Then came the day she thought would herald a new beginning, marked with happiness she had never known. Her husband was meant to love her, and he did.

But not enough, she mutters, digging into her nails with fatal anxiety, and rushing to her cell in Bathinda Central Jail, one of the six central jails of Punjab that house women prisoners. Charged with poisoning her opium-addict husband and two children (one survived) to death, Manpreet Sharma has been here for one-and-a-half years. Right across in the male ward is her lover, with whom she allegedly connived, to commit the heinous act that shook Bathinda. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison. But her sentence has already begun, like that of several women prisoners in Punjab, charged or convicted of violent crimes like murders.

“Inmates are very hostile to her. But they have great sympathy for her children,” says jail superintendent L.S. Jakhar, who always finds her quiet during rounds. In her cell, too, a piercing silence prevails, as she keeps her dark secrets to herself. By her side are scriptures, her companions on the road to redemption.

These cases abound, as Punjab jails, meant for 336 women, now house 800. In two decades, crimes by women have nearly trebled. The rot is no longer about drug peddling or dowry deaths alone, there is a potential threat from crimes of passion, with women resorting to murders for obtaining the objects of their affection.

Dr Rajiv Anand, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist working with women prisoners, explains: “Tolerance levels among women are diminishing alarmingly. They are asserting like never before. When they can’t have what they want, they tend to develop dangerous impulses. These, if not contained, have potential for brutal crime. Studies in the West among women convicts show that they commit crimes during pre-menstrual periods, when hormonal changes drive them to low tolerance levels.”

In all the jails that this correspondent visited, over 30 per cent murder cases pertained to killings of husbands, lovers, parents or children, by women in “love”. The youngest such undertrial is Karamjit Kaur, 18, housed at Patiala Central Jail with her two sisters. Hailing from Ghanaur, she is charged with poisoning her lover who married someone else. In jail since April 20 this year, she, however, pleads, “I didn’t do it. I loved him.”

This jail houses several young girls, including Inderjit Kaur, a graduate from Government College, Sector 42, Chandigarh, charged with killing her mother, an employee of Punjab State Education Board, Mohali, to make way for marriage to her lover, whom her mother hated; Amritsar girl Neki Nalwa, who allegedly connived with her paramour Brandy to murder her husband, Sukhwinder, an engineer with Quark, Mohali. Sukhwinder was shot dead. Also lodged in the jail is Sonia Walia and her husband Jasvir Singh from Hoshiarpur, facing trial for allegedly killing Abhi Verma, a local jeweller’s son, for ransom. Sonia faces death penalty, subject to Punjab and Haryana High Court’s confirmation.

Of 80 women prisoners in Patiala jail, 53 are in for murder. At Ludhiana Women’s Jail, the only all-women’s jail in Punjab, this number is 80 out of 232 prisoners, says Superintendent Chander Prakash. Tragically, each one is either clueless or absolutely brazen about the act, with no psychological buffer against trauma. Each is lonely in the war against memories that come stained with blood.

The portrait of most women prisoners is much the same — each layered with silence over what happened and why; of pain over separation from family; of the fear of future.

Not a single jail has a permanent psychologist and psychiatrist on board. Ludhiana jail has a psychiatrist in the visiting lady doctor but there’s no regular psychological approach to disturbed or deviant behaviour. Never mind government’s stress on understanding the psychology of crime, one of the 28 aims of Punjab State Prison Policy.

Most jail superintendents even mistake smiling faces for happy ones and dismiss women’s fights as routine. Patiala women’s cell head Kulwant Kaur has no clue why this habitual offender Satya Devi - a Sansi - routinely pretends illness and mocks at a wasted effort. “She loves to harass us,” says deputy superintendent J.P Singh and Kulwant Jaur, unaware that the convict is seeking attention, like others at six central (Jalandhar, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur, Patiala, Amritsar, Bathinda) and two district (Sangrur and Hoshiarpur) jails where women are lodged in enclosures separate from men.

In every jail, murder convicts abound, awaiting counselling. In Ludhiana, there are several - Karamjit Kaur, a widow convicted for killing her children to marry her lover; Dimple, a 26-year-old mother of six-year-old from Ludhiana, married to the younger brother of the man she killed; Manjit Kaur and her mother, who have spent 10 years in jail in a brutal double murder case reported on the outskirts of Ludhiana, along Chandigarh-Ludhiana road 11 years ago. A whopping 158 of 232 prisoners, here, are undertrials.

Across Punjab prisons, women undertrials outnumber convicts. Out of 800 prisoners, 80 per cent (560) are undertrials, some since three years. For the record, 2.5 crore cases are filed in Indian courts, annually. There are only 12,500 judges for the deliverance of justice. To be continued