The Madras High Court was on Monday taken aback to hear from an amicus curiae that almost all major prisons in the State had “punishment cells” where the inmates were lodged in solitary confinement after being stripped naked. Such a practice was followed to deter inmates from raising their voices and questioning the prison authorities, she said.
Appearing before Justices S. Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad, senior counsel R. Vaigai said in the guise of punishing inmates accused of misconduct, such cruel punishments were imposed even on those who question absence of basic amenities.
The submissions were made during the hearing of a suo motu public interest litigation petition taken by the court pursuant to a general direction issued by the Supreme Court in 2017 to all High Courts in the country. The Supreme Court had felt that large-scale prison reforms would be possible only through continuous monitoring by jurisdictional High Courts.
During the course of hearing of the suo motu case on Monday, Justice Manikumar said that he, in his capacity as the portfolio judge of Puducherry, had received a report on the administrative side from the Chief Judge of Puducherry in connection with lack of basic facilities in the prisons over there, assault of a prisoner and also a complaint against a law enforcer.
Therefore, the judge requested the amicus curiae to pay a vist to the prisons in Puducherry too and directed the Chief Secretary of the Union Territory to render all assistance required for such inspections. After including the Chief Secretary as one of the respondents to the case, the Bench ordered that a preliminary report on the inspection could be filed on March 1.
It was during this time that Ms. Vaigai informed the court that the living conditions in prisons were inhumane and that prisoners were subjected to various forms of ill-treatment. When the senior counsel spoke about punishment cells, Justice Prasad thought she was referring to cells where inmates were lodged in solitude as a measure of punishment for misconduct.
However, when the amicus told the court that the inmates were also stripped in the cells, he raised his eyebrows and could not believe that even such things could happen. “Anybody who questions the authorities are put inside the punishment cells,” she said after which the judges decided to hear the issue related to Tamil Nadu by next week.
