The Madras High Court bench here today ordered the Home Secretary and the ADGP (Prisons) to file an Action Taken Report (ATR) within four weeks on a PIL seeking to appoint trained and skilled-non official members to jails as per Tamil Nadu Prison Rules for visiting the prisons and addressing the grievance of prisoners.
Justices V Ramasubramanian and N Kirubakaran directed the officials to find out if the rules had been implemented and file an Action Taken Report.
The petitioner Henry Tiphange, Executive Director of People's Watch an NGO, submitted that as per rules and various guidelines and judgements issued by the Human Rights Commission and courts, non-official members should be appointed and they should visit the jail and inspect the quality of food, drinking water, clothing and sanitation.
But in Tamil Nadu, prisons had been remained as closed institutions. The physical structure of the prison and archaic rules of management of these punitive institutions endowed them with a cover of obscurity in which fundamental human rights could be unofficially violated and officially denied.
The prison visiting system was the only mechanism where people from outside community could enter the prison and monitor the human rights situation there, the judges said.
There are nine central prisons, three special prisons for women, 40 borstal school including borstal school for youngsters, 89 sub-jails including two special sub-jails in the state.
The IG of prisons, in consultation with the District Collector, should recommend members of the advisory board and non-official members should be appointed and gazette notification made. But they were not being appointed in the state, the petitioner contended.
He said that in 2014 a daily reported that 69 inmates died in prisons in a year. The government had admitted that 12 persons died in Madurai Central prison followed by 11 in Central prison II and Puzhal jail in Chennai.
If trained non-official members were appointed, the prisoners condition would have improved and they would not have died, he said.
