IMPORTANT POINT
Prisoners are also human being. They have a right to be treated with dignity.

ORDER :

Madan B. Lokur, J.

1. Prison reforms have been the subject matter of discussion and decisions rendered by this Court from time to time over the last 35 years. Unfortunately, even though Article 21 of the Constitution requires a life of dignity for all persons, little appears to have changed on the ground as far as prisoners are concerned and we are once again required to deal with issues relating to prisons in the country and their reform.

2. As far back as in 1980, this Court had occasion to deal with the rights of prisoners in Sunil Batra (II) v. Delhi Administration, (1980) 3 SCC 488. In that decision, this Court gave a very obvious answer to the question whether prisoners are persons and whether they are entitled to fundamental rights while in custody, although there may be a shrinkage in the fundamental rights. This is what this Court had to say in this regard:

“Are prisoners persons? Yes, of course. To answer in the negative is to convict the nation and the Constitution of dehumanization and to repudiate the world legal order, which now recognises rights of prisoners in the International Covenant on Prisoners’ Rights to which our country has signed assent.” In Batra case, (1978) 4 SCC 494 this Court has rejected the hands-off doctrine and it has been ruled that fundamental rights do not flee the person as he enters the prison although they may suffer shrinkage necessitated by incarceration.

3. A little later in the aforesaid decision, this Court pointed out the double handicap that prisoners face; the first being that most prisoners belong to the weaker sections of society and the second being that since they are confined in a walled-off world their voices are inaudible. This is what this Court had to say in this regard:-

“Prisoners are peculiarly and doubly handicapped. For one thing, most prisoners belong to the weaker segment, in poverty, literacy, social station and the like. Secondly, the prison house is a walled-off world which is incommunicado for the human world, with the result that the bonded inmates are invisible, their voices inaudible, their injustices unheeded. So it is imperative, as implicit in Article 21, that life or liberty, shall not be kept in suspended animation or congealed into animal existence without the freshening flow of fair procedure.”

4. In Rama Murthy v. State of Karnataka, (1997) 2 SCC 642 this Court identified as many as nine issues facing prisons and needing reforms. They are:

(i) over-crowding;

(ii) Delay in trial;

(iii) Torture and ill-treatment;

(iv) Neglect of health and hygiene;

(v) Insubstantial food and inadequate clothing;

(vi) Prison vices;

(vii) Deficiency in communication;

(viii) Streamlining of jail visits;

(ix) Management of open air prisons. This Court expressed the view that these major problems need immediate attention. Unfortunately, we are still struggling with a resolution of at least some of these problems.

5. In T.K. Gopal v. State of Karnataka, (2000) 6 SCC 168 this Court advocated a therapeutic approach in dealing with the criminal tendencies of prisoners. It was pointed out that there could be several factors that lead a prisoner to commit a crime but nevertheless a prisoner is required to be treated as a human being entitled to all the basic human rights, human dignity and human sympathy. It was pointed out that it is this philosophy that has persuaded this Court in a series of decisions to project the need for prison reforms. This is what this Court had to say:

“The therapeutic approach aims at curing the criminal tendencies which were the product of a diseased psychology. There may be many factors, including family problems. We are not concerned with those factors as therapeutic approach has since been treated as an effective method of punishment which not only satisfies the requirements of law that a criminal should be punished and the punishment prescribed must be meted out to him, but also reforms the criminal through various processes, the most fundamental of which