Prison Law and Regulations

A role model for many Indians, Dr. Kiran Bedi is one of India’s gutsiest, most admired women. She was the first Indian woman to become an IPS officer. From day one, she has proved her mettle and is respected across the world for her honesty, integrity and efficiency. Kiran Bedi joined the Indian police force in 1972. She has contributed immensely to improving every domain that she has worked in. She is most renowned for her unique and innovative reforms such as Vipassana meditation that she introduced in Tihar jail. Since then, she has worked in several fields and introduced various reforms in prisons, under the Indian laws, such as narcotics control, prison management, participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations, meditation and literacy programs in jail.

The articles 72 and 161 of the Indian Constitution add a human touch to the country’s judicial process by conferring powers on the President and the Governors of various states, respectively to grant pardon or show mercy to criminals sentenced to death. These two articles of the Constitution of India endow the President and the Governor with the power to view the mercy applications of convicts with kindness. They can review the applications without having to view it from a legal angle like that of legal experts who base their opinion solely on the basis of available evidence and the testimony of witnesses.

Are you aware of your basic rights when arrested? Ignorance about our legal rights can lead to victimization by the police or other law-enforcement officers. The first thing to do when arrested is to keep your calm and not panic; remember fair treatment and respect from the police is your legal right.

The Constitution of India assures various rights to its citizens even when they are arrested in criminal cases. It will help to know the circumstances that can lead to one’s arrest and the rights that one can exercise during and after the arrest.

The Indian government’s decision to decongest Indian jails began implementation with the release of 92, 000 undertrial prisoners, mostly charged with petty offences, in April 2010. For these prisoners, it marked the regaining of right to life and liberty provided under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.

The process of filing FIR or First Information Report is provided under section 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973. The FIR is the primary information given to a police officer regarding the commission of a crime by the first informant. To file an FIR, the informant has to approach the police station in the jurisdiction of which the offence or crime has taken place.

Believe it or not, there are many children leading deplorable lives inside Indian jails. Shocked? Well, these children are not in jail because of any delinquent activities but because their mothers are locked in those jails.

Custodial horror is a daily occurrence for women prisoners in India. After all, what can women do when their ‘custodians’ become their violators? The question is very intimidating and frightening but this is actually happening to women in India. There have been innumerable cases where ‘men-in-khaki,’ as we usually refer to the police as, have been caught outraging the women prisoners’ modesty, inside and outside the jail. Worse, women prisoners in India are not just raped but they are even murdered by policemen. The state of Maharashtra has registered the highest number of custodial deaths i.e. 316, followed by Uttar Pradesh (255) and BJP-ruled Gujarat (190) in the last 16 years. According to the National Human Rights Commission, there are 2318 cases of custody deaths across the country, all of which have been committed by policemen, since October 1993.

On 16^th April 2010, Manish Tiwari, Ludhiana MP and National Spokesperson for the AICC, spoke in Parliament about the plight of the 17 Indians who were sentenced to death by a Sharjah court. Before we discuss the salient points of Tiwari’s statements, let us understand the basic facts on this matter.

Guidelines for arrests are rarely followed in most countries. The horrifying accounts of how brutally arrested persons are treated by the police once they are in their custody is common knowledge in India. We know that being arrested is equivalent to being tortured and forced to admit to crimes that we may not even have dreamed of. For the same reasons, it is essential to understand the guidelines for arrests.