SC 8-point fiat: Decongest jails, improve inmates’ life

R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, February 5

The Supreme Court today issued an additional set of eight directives for decongesting jails, improving prisoners’ living condition and offering them education, skill development and post-release rehabilitation and care.

A Bench comprising Justices MB Lokur and RK Agrawal issued a fiat to the Directors General of Police (DGPs) and Inspectors General of Police (IGPs) in charge of prisons to ensure effective utilisation of funds to improve the facilities for prisoners such as health, hygiene, food, clothing and rehabilitation.

The Bench said overcrowding of jails had not improved despite the SC’s intervention time and again in the past 35 years, mainly due to the fact that poor undertrial prisoners were unable to meet the bail conditions.

The apex court noted that as many as 65 per cent of 3,64,081 prisoners in the country were undertrials, while district jails had 32 per cent more inmates than their holding capacity. Central jails were overcrowded to the extent of 121 per cent of their capacity by the end of 2014.

To resolve this problem, the Under Trial Review Committee in every district should meet every three months and the first meeting should take place before March 31, 2016, it said. The review committees should ensure that undertrials were not denied bail only because of the fact that they could not furnish bail bonds due to poverty.

Legal Services Authority should arrange “competent lawyers” for undertrial prisoners and convicts, particularly the poor and indigent. Legal aid for the poor did not mean poor legal aid, it clarified.

It directed the Union Home Ministry to conduct an annual review of the implementation of the Model Prison Manual 2016, which had as many as 32 chapters dealing with custodial management, medical care, education of prisoners, vocational training and skill development programmes, legal aid and welfare of prisoners. “It is a composite document that needs to be implemented with due seriousness,” the Bench said in its order passed in a suo motu writ petition.