PIL filed in Delhi HC requesting conjugal visit in Tihar Jail

The Delhi High Court on Thursday agreed to hear a PIL seeking the court's intervention in issuing a direction to Tihar Jail authorities for arrangements to provide conjugal visitation rights to the prisoners.

The PIL seeks to set aside the Rule 608 of Delhi Prison Rules, 2018 which provides "meeting to take place in the presence of a prison officer" particularly in a situation when the prisoner is meeting his/her spouse/lawful partner and to clarify other ancillary rules.

The petition has been filed advocate-cum-social activist Amit Sahni before the bench of Chief Justice Rajender Menon and Justice Brijesh Sethi, which has agreed to list the matter for Friday.

A conjugal visit, which may also be referred to as 'private family visiting,' is a visit wherein a jail inmate gets to spend time in private with a visitor, usually a legal partner/spouse.

As on February 28, 2019, the 16 jails in Delhi prisons had a population of 15,733 with 15,163 male and 570 female inmates.

The figure includes 3,105 convicts, 12,136 undertrials, 13 detenues, and others. Of the entire prison population, 7,921 are in the age group of 21 to 30 years, 5,809 in the age group of 30 to 50 and 101 in the age group of 50 to 65 years.

As the per terms of imprisonment, 1,361 convicts are serving a life term, while 756 are serving imprisonment ranging from five to ten years.