Top court upholds cap on number of visits by prisoners’ kin, advocates

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New Delhi, January 9

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to interfere with the Delhi High Court’s order putting its seal of approval on the decision to cap the number of visits by prisoners’ family members, friends and legal advisers to twice a week.

Terming it a policy decision, a Bench, led by Justice Bela M Trivedi, said it was not inclined to interfere with the High Court order’s issued on February 16, 2022. The HC in its order had said that the decision could not be termed as “completely arbitrary” as it had been taken after careful consideration of the facilities available in prisons, availability of staff and the number of undertrials.

“In matters of policy, the courts do not substitute its own conclusion with the one arrived at by the government merely because another view is possible. Therefore, this court is not inclined to pass any order issuing writ of mandamus,” the HC had said, while deciding a petition filed by advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai, challenging certain provisions of the Delhi Prison Rules, 2018. The high court had, however, permitted the petitioner to make a representation to the state with his suggestions.

Dehadrai wanted interviews with legal advisers to be open from Monday to Friday for an appropriate allotted time with no cap on interviews per week.

There are 16 jails in Delhi, housing more than 18,000 prisoners against the sanctioned capacity of 10,026. The Delhi Government had defended the cap, saying looking at the number of inmates in the prisons, it had decided to put a cap on the number of permitted visits by family members, relatives, friends and legal counsel.