Study finds Haryana jails overcrowded, flags problems faced by women inmates

A study has found that 11 of the 19 prisons in Haryana are overcrowded, with the Rewari district jail coping with nearly twice the number of inmates it should hold.

The study by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) under the aegis of Haryana State Legal Services Authority (HALSA) also flagged problems faced by women prisoners, including "humiliation" during search operations.

However, it made clear the state's prisons were not the "dingy, dirty and dilapidated hell-holes".

It found basic infrastructure, maintenance and cleanliness in place.

The study, "Inside Haryana Prisons", found that overcrowding ranged from 22.8 per cent in the Panipat jail to 170 per cent in the Rewari prison.

The team interviewed 475 prisoners, representatives of legal services institutions and prison officials between December 2017 and May 2018 for the study.

Ninety-three of the prisoners interviewed were women, 192 undertrials, 122 male convicts, 39 juveniles and 29 foreign nationals.

The state has 19,000 inmates in 19 jails, including three central prisons one in Ambala and two in Hisar.

The other 16 are district jails.

The team inspected all of them.

It found overcrowding at Ambala and Hisar (I), Rewari, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Sirsa, Jind, Panipat, Narnaul and Bhiwani prisons.

The study said there were no guidelines in place to safeguard the dignity of prisoners during body searches.

In one of the prisons, some women inmates told the team about their discomfort during surprise checks conducted to seize contraband and mobile phones.

It said prisoners from the Gurugram jail complained to the team about the "humiliation" they suffered during one such operation.

"They said in November 2017, they were strip searched by women constables in a humiliating and harsh manner as part of an operation for the recovery of mobile phones and contraband."
On a positive note, it found, "Prisons are not the dingy, dirty, dilapidated hell-holes that one might visualise them to be."