JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J.:— The province of prison justice, the conceptualization of freedom behind bars and the role of judicial power as constitutional sentinel in a prison setting, are of the gravest moment in a world of escalating torture by the minions of State, and in India, where this virgin area of jurisprudence is becoming painfully relevant. Therefore, explicative length has been the result;and so it is that, with all my reverence for and concurrence with my learned brethren on the jurisdictional and jurisprudential basics they have indicated, I have preferred to plough a lonely furrow.

The Core-questions.

2. One important interrogation lies at the root of these twin writ petitions: Does a prison setting, ipso facto, out-law the rule of law, lock out the judicial process from the jail gates and declare a long holiday for human rights of convicts in confinement, and (to change the metaphor) if there is no total eclipse, what luscent segment is open for judicial justice? Three inter-related problems project themselves: (i) a jurisdictional dilemma between hands off prisons and take over jail administration (ii) a constitutional conflict between detentional security and innate