Languishing in Central Jail, Tihar, for the past three years, Sumer Singh (name changed) was given life term by a trial court last month after it found him guilty of murder. Last week, he had a date with a batch of law students who were visiting the high security prison under a first of its kind programme designed and launched by the Delhi Legal Services Authority (DLSA).
It was a stirring experience for Singh who had to confront many questions. Fromwhy he killed a fellow human being, to did he repent his act, queries also probed into his legal necessities. He was asked if he was satisfied with his lawyer, if any free legal aid reached him or was he counselled by anybody.
His future course of action, about appealing to the High Court against his conviction, his economic and social background, his family matters were also enquired by the students. They wanted to know if he had applied for sentence reduction and what happened to the remissions he earned?
Each of the 110 students drawn from the University School of Law and Legal Studies (USLLS) of Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, was given a detailed questionnaire to help them profile jail inmates, assess their legal and psychological requirements and counsel them accordingly.
Students came face-to-face with hard realities as the inmates were called out in the presence of jail authorities and they interacted with them. Certainly, the scenes were not out of Hindi movies. “The aim of this project is to identify those inmates who have spent a major part of their sentence in jail. Law students will not only be confronted with stark social realities but will also conduct ward-wise interaction with the inmates — both undertrials and convicts. They will also identify inmates who are in need of legal aid, psychological and social counselling,” says Sanjay Sharma, a judicial officer who is also the project officer of DLSA instrumental in involving law students in DLSA’s internship and other legal aid programmes.
Emphasising the importance of legal aid for those who need it, DLSA’s Member-Secretary, Asha Menon, says that more often inmates tend to withdraw into a shell and their responses become conditioned by the prison environment.
“We have observed that many students are able to interact with the inmates in a free manner and make them aware of their legal rights. We want to reach out to each of the 11,000 inmates lodged in Central Tihar Jail and assess their needs. The project is ambitious but our law students will help us implement it. The database in jail is computerised and we will use the reports submitted by the students to further strengthen DLSA’s programmes meant for prisoners and later help in their rehabilitation in the society so that they are able to lead normal lives after they step out of jail,” says Menon.
She says DLSA’s initiative found ready acceptance of Professor M. Afzal Wani who heads the Legal Aid programme of the USLLS, GGSIP University. He agreed to provide the services of the law students. Next in line are law students from Campus Law Centre of Delhi University and also from Jamia Millia University. After reaching out to each inmate in Central Tihar Jail, DLSA’s student-volunteers will assist the inmates of Rohini jail.
“Our attempt is to take legal aid programmes out of the court premises and make them dynamic and in tune with our changing social realities. If lawyers and judges of tomorrow get involved in them today, we will be only doing our extra bit to make them more responsible, aware and sensitive human beings,” notes Menon.
