Death sentences without convictions

The abysmal state of medical care in one of the country’s most high-profile jails

The capital’s much showcased Tihar Jail was recently in the news when six of its inmates, including four undertrials, died in quick succession within a week. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who also holds prisons portfolio, is yet to make a statement on this development. After all, convicts are not exactly a vote bank!

Deaths in Indian prisons do not surprise. More than a thousand deaths have occurred in Indian prisons every year over the past five years. Over 8 per cent of these deaths are claimed as unnatural, although this figure could be much higher.

Tihar has recorded 25 deaths so far this year. The figures for 2002 and 2004 stand at 27 and 36 (including seven suicides) respectively. A prison which accommodates 116 per cent more prisoners than its capacity naturally forces the inmates to share scant living space and facilities. A grimmer picture emerges if we know that 82 per cent of Tihar’s 13,552 inmates (as on April 2007) were undertrials. While these poor undertrials wait endlessly for their fate, the inhospitable prison conditions quietly execute them.

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The NHRC had directed all governments to undertake a thorough medical check-up of all prisoners admitted. Some of the states are yet to begin this process, given lack of medical staff. If these mandatory medical check-ups are conducted scrupulously, most of the seriously vulnerable cases can be detected and attended to.

The Tihar prison officials, who claim largest number of doctors and paramedics on the role, remain completely silent about the 12 posts for doctors and six for psychiatrists which have been lying vacant since 2002. Tihar officials claim that they spend more than Rs 3.8 crore per year to provide medical facilities to the prisoners. However, most of this money seems to be going into medical infrastructure, which does not necessarily serve the purpose. A lack of quick medical attention is one of the most important reasons for prison deaths. Doctors are rarely provided quarters within prison premises. During the night, doctors are expected to be on call but that does not mean much. The problem is compounded by the very nature of the structure of prison administration. The information about the patient’s critical health condition has to pass through several stages of clearance before he or she can be taken out of prison for emergency treatment in a speciality hospital. The whole process takes far too much time and can prove costly in terms of human life.

All these factors point to only one thing: the need to develop a professional and sensitive prison medical establishment, which is independent of the prison bureaucracy and accountable for every life lost.

The writer is a consultant, Prison Programme, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi