It’s parole paradise for privileged jailbirds in Goa

PANAJI: Some convicts face hardship in getting parole and have to knock on the doors of courts to get their application accepted, some others face no such difficulty. Of 34 convicts serving life terms, 16 managed to be out on parole for more than 100 days in a year, and 25 for more than 50 days a year, information accessed through the Right to Information (RTI) Act for a period between 2015 and 2020 revealed.
All these applications were cleared by parole authorities. Since the start of the pandemic, over 50 convicts have gone on an extended parole.
Aware that some inmates have been able to obtain parole on a regular basis, six months ago the inspector general of prison (IGP) started the process to modify prisons rules, but the work was delayed due to the pandemic. “We are modifying the prison rules so that inmates are not able to avail parole and as easily as they can now under the existing prison rules. We hope to bring in changes in the rules in a few months,” IGP Gurudas Pilarnkar said.
The RTI information also revealed that two convicts linked to two different high-profile murder cases stayed out of jail for about 200 days in a year.
At least 25 of them were out on parole for a minimum 30 days a year for the last five years.
In 2015, one convict served only 87 days in jail. He was granted parole five times that particular year with his longest out of jail stay — parole — being 74 days.
He remained on parole between September 24 and December 6, 2015.
One murder accused, serving a life term along with his friend in the sensational abduction and murder of a young boy, has succeeded in getting parole every year since 2015. He has been out on parole for a continuous stretch of more than 100 days in 2016 and 2019. He was allowed 104 days — January 1 to April 13 in 2016 and November 5 to February 2 in 2019 — accounting for another 135 days. He was again granted parole of another 24 days in 2019.
The parole condition states that it can be granted in the event of an emergent situation such as death or serious illness of a family member, which can be a father, a mother, a brother, a sister, a spouse or children.
Convicts are also entitled for parole to attend a marriage in the family, such as that of a brother, sister or children. The prison rules do not list any other reason for granting parole application of jail inmates.
Interestingly, some lifers in Colvale Central jail have even got parole in December, coinciding with New Year’s Eve. There are three such instances where two convicts linked to high profile cases got paroles for three consecutive years during December-end and they returned to jail only in the new year.
It could not be independently confirmed what were the compelling reasons for the authorities to grant the parole applications of the three lifers and also to grant them repeated extensions in parole in the last five years.
Former district and session judge Pramod Kamat said that this was “unjust” and prison rules need to be tightened to ensure that the system is not manoeuvred by some to their advantage. “There is a need for clarity in prison rules,” he said.