The Delhi High Court has agreed to hear a PIL alleging poor healthcare facilities in Tihar Jail leading to deaths of many undertrials and convicts lodged in South Asia's largest prison complex.
A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw fixed May 7 for hearing the issue, which was sent to it by a single bench judge, who took suo motu note of media reports last year on deaths inside Tihar.
The single judge in his letter to the Chief Justice of Delhi High Court asked whether she could take up the issue suo motu on the basis of the news items and call for an explanation from the authorities concerned.
Taking note of the request made by the judge, the Chief Justice converted the issue into a PIL, in which the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Delhi government and its administration department have been made respondents.
The single judge had also suggested a need for a policy to treat inmates at Tihar suffering from chronic diseases like cancer and AIDS.
Usually the average death rate of inmates in Tihar remains around two to three deaths a year, except the cases of death sentences, the news reports had stated.
But in the past one-and-a-half years, the trend has seen an unprecedented change and death rate inside the jail premises has increased by a whopping 100 per cent, the reports had said and the single had taken note of these in his letter to the Chief Justice of the High Court.
