In a worrying trend, Tamil Nadu has yet again emerged as the State with the highest number of detenues in prisons, accounting for over 58 per cent of the all-India total.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data on Prison Statistics, released on Saturday, revealed that of the 3237 detenues (those arrested under preventive detention laws) in the country at the end of 2014, 1892, including 37 women, were in prisons in Tamil Nadu. This was an increase from 1781 in 2013.
Tamil Nadu was followed by Gujarat with 594 detenues in 2014.
An analysis of the statistics showed that 53 per cent of the detenues in the State were Dalits. Among the 1892 detained, 886 persons were illiterates. As a percentage of the total prison population, preventive detention inmates accounted for 11.9 per cent—by far the highest in the country.
While the NCRB does not provide data on number of persons arrested under specific detention laws, data put up on the Tamil Nadu Prisons Department indicate that an overwhelming majority were booked under the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum-Grabbers, Act, better known as the Goondas Act.
Interestingly, the data shows that huge number of detenues (2781) is released before the completion of the detention period.
Disturbing trend
General Secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), V. Suresh, said disturbing trends have emerged from the NCRB data over the years.
The statistics were indicative of the fact that those in the margins of society, both socially and economically, bear the brunt of such laws. This is reflected in the high number of Dalits and illiterates among the preventive detention inmates.
“In our own experience, we see that the weaker sections are more susceptible to such laws,” he said, expressing concern that the issue is rarely taken up by political parties. “Sometimes, the preventive detention laws could also be abused to settle scores with political dissidents,” he pointed out.
Former Judge of the Madras High Court, K. Chandru, said police officers used the preventive laws to circumvent the default bail clause in the Criminal Procedure Code.
“In the Cr.PC, bail is an automatic process if the report is not filed within 60 days. The police use the preventive detention clauses to keep persons in jail for up to a year,” he said.
Stating that such laws have turned into “absurdities”, Mr. Chandru recalled rolling trophies provided to police Inspectors who recommend the highest number of detentions. Also, the advisory boards deal with the detention cases mechanically. “I refused to be part of these boards as there is no right to cross examine. I felt it was a demeaning exercise,” he claimed.
Poorly drafted
He said the detention orders were poorly drafted and mostly looked like Photostat copies. “In my experience, I found that for certain crimes, the detention orders would be identical though they come from different places,” Mr. Chandru pointed out.
Human rights activist, Henri Tiphange, claimed the numbers pointed to how badly the State fared in terms of upholding civil liberties. “The Supreme Court has time and again said preventive laws should be invoked only in exceptional cases since they curtail Constitutional Rights. But the numbers we have paint a completely different picture,” he said.
Mr. Tiphange also faulted with the slow criminal justice system, which encouraged police officers to take the short-cut and invoke preventive laws.
