Set up jail reforms panel: HC

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 6

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has directed the state to constitute a jail reforms committee. Among other things, it will come out with a system of conjugal and family visits for jail inmates.

Justice Surya Kant also made it clear that the committee would be headed by a former judge of the high court and its members would include a social scientist and an expert in jail reforms and prison management.

The directions came on a petition by a couple lodged in the Patiala central jail. While Jasvir Singh was facing the gallows, his wife Sonia was serving a life sentence in a kidnapping and criminal conspiracy case. Separated by legal bars, the two wished to be united “for the sole purpose of getting a progeny”. Their counsel Gursharan K Mann had added: “In their case, the demand is not for personal sexual gratification”.

Declining their plea, Justice Surya Kant added: “The Committee shall formulate a scheme for creation of an environment for conjugal and family visits for jail inmates and shall identify the categories of inmates entitled to such visits, keeping in mind the beneficial nature and reformatory goals of such facilities.”

It would also recommend amendments to rules or policies for ensuring parole and furlough for conjugal visits. It would also spell out eligibility conditions for such relief; and classify convicts disentitled to conjugal visits. It would determine “whether the husband and wife, who both stand convicted, should, as a matter of policy, be included in such a list, keeping in view the risk and danger of law and security, adverse social impact and multiple disadvantages to their child”.

The committee would also evaluate options for expanding the scope and reach of “open prisons”, where certain categories of convicts and their families could stay together for long periods. It would also make recommendations on necessary infrastructure for actualising the same, besides considering the feasibility of coming out with recommendations to facilitate the process, with special emphasis on reforming and rehabilitating convicts.

“The committee shall suggest ways and means for enhancing the facilities for frequent linkage and connectivity between the convict and his/her family; and shall prepare a long-term plan for modernisation of the jail infrastructure consistent with the reforms to be carried out in terms of this order coupled with other necessary reforms,” the Judge asserted.

Justice Surya Kant also set one-year deadline for the committee to make its recommendations after visiting “major jail premises”. It would “continue to monitor infrastructural and other changes to be carried out in existing jails and in the prison administration system as per its recommendations”.