Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, July 1

Prisoners are human beings despite their liberty having been curtailed, the Punjab and Haryana High Court today ruled, adding the confinement of “professional criminals” such as “gangsters” in individual cells for the most part of the day for limitless periods was impermissible.

Bench observations

• A prisoner may be classified based on criminal record, violent and aggressive tendencies, etc. by a panel. The petitioners can challenge their classification
• Replacing outdated prison law with more enlightened prescriptions remained a hope
• Members of rival gangs could be confined in different barracks, system of staggered lockouts could be retained and confinement to cells required to be restricted from sunset to sunrise

Holding their “quasi-solitary confinement” to be illegal and violative of the rights guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution, Justice Sudhir Mittal suggested housing identified prisoners in separate barracks, instead of cells with “mess” provision.

Justice Mittal asserted more than four decades had elapsed since the Supreme Court asserted “protection of the prisoner within his rights was part of the office of Article 32”. But the true import of the Supreme Court directions apparently had not percolated to the prison administrators.

Justice Mittal was hearing petitions filed through counsel R Kartikeya, Saurav Bhatia, Amjad Khan, Adarsh Priyadarshi and Raghav Sharma. Justice Mittal observed each of the petitioner-prisoners was being confined to a separate cell for 22 hours a day. Such confinement was not strictly solitary, but could be called quasi-solitary as the inmate was deprived of human company for extended lengths of time. Such confinement was held to be extremely harsh and violative of basic human rights.

Measures had been and were being enforced to maintain prison discipline and prevent crime syndicates from operating within the prisons. But security measures could be imposed only up to a limit “and this limit was placed by fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 19 and 21”, which were available even to the prisoners.

Justice Mittal added the prisoners may not enjoy all rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Yet, basic rights and liberties were available to them. The court process restricted the liberty of prisoners. The same courts also had the duty to monitor that the liberty was not restricted beyond the bounds of law. The courts, in the process, did not become prison administrators, but acted as the guardians of fundamental rights to which even a prisoner was entitled to.