Judgment

V. R. KRISHNA IYER, J,:- Is a prison term in Tihar Jail a post-graduate course in crime? Such is the poignant issue that emerges from the facts of this case.

2. The fundamental human right is not to a legal system that is infallible but to one that is fair - these great words of Lord Diplock in Maharaj v. Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago (No. 2), (1978) 1 WLR 902 at p. 911 trigger our jurisdiction to ensure a fair legal deal to the prisoner whose petition to this Court makes frightening exposures about the insiders of Delhis Central Jail.

3. Kaushik, a lifer (to use jail jargon), now lodged in the Tihar Central Jail, has moved this quasi-habeas corpus petition wherein he bitterly complains with facts and figures, of the terror and horror, physical and psychic, let loose on him and other jail-mates by a cryptocriminal combination of senior officials and superior prisoners, thereby making the prison life within that walled world such a trauma and torment the law never meant under the sentence suffered at the hands of the court. Prison torture is not beyond the reach of this Court in its constitutional jurisdiction and so we appointed Shri Subodh Markandeya as amicus curi