Plea On Prison System Revamp To Be Heard Todays

The Delhi High Court will hear on Monday a public interest litigation alleging practice of apartheid in the Indian jails where prisoners were classified on the basis of their social, economic and educational status irrespective of crime committed by them.

In pursuant to the notices issued by the High Court to the city government, the latter constituted a committee chaired by a retired judge, Justice Santosh Duggal, to go into the issue of prisoners classification.

The report would be placed before the court today. The Santosh Duggal committee has submitted its report to the Lt Governor of Delhi, Tejinder Khanna, on April two.

The petitioner, All India Lawyers Forum president O P Saxena, had alleged that while heinous murder accused like Sushil Sharma were given B class facility in the Tihar jail, petty criminals were languishing in cells which lacked basic facilities.

Saxena had contended that the classification system should be based on the gravity of the offence committed by the accused rather than on any other extraneous considerations. The petitioner contended that the obnoxious prison classification system prevalent at present ran counter to the right of equality guaranteed under Article 14 of the Constitution.

Earlier, in another case related to prisons, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Krishna Iyer had observed that can there be inequality in prison too on the score of social and financial status?

Bank robbers in B classification, beacuse they are rich by robbery, and the nameless little men in C class because they are only common Indians, Justice Iyer said.

The direction for the appointment of the committee came from Justice Usha Mehra two years ago.

After nine months of deliberations by the Santosh Duggal committee, which included interviews with prisoners and legal experts, the final report was prepared.

The committee was also directed by Justice Mehra to refer to an earlier report on prison reforms submitted by a committee headed by Justice A N Mulla.