Karagar Sankhya 2, Tihar: An Investigation

            I know not whether Laws be right or whether Laws be wrong           all that we know who live in jail is that the wall is strong;

            and that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.

– Oscar Wilde

“I am convicted under 302”, replies the young man in his early thirties; on being asked the reason he is within the walls of Tihar. Pritam has already spent more than a decade of his life imprisonment and knows almost everything and everyone within the premises of the jail no. 2. The jail officials directed him to guide us, the members of Legal Aid Society from Campus Law Centre. We followed him with an inquisitiveness of finding every possible dimension in which we could be of some help. Apart from providing legal counselling and legal aid; we had, in our minds, an immense curiosity to investigate the life confined within the walls of Tihar.

Spread over 400 acres, Tihar Prisons came into existence in 1958 with the below aims and objectives –

• To provide for the detention of the prisoners committed to prison custody.
• To provide for the reformation and rehabilitation of prisoners with a view to ensure their safe detention.
• To provide for minimum standards of treatment of prisoners consistent with the principles of dignity of individuals and all other matters connected there with or incidental thereto in jails.

To find the answers to most of our ‘hows and whys’ we were welcomed in the Legal Aid Cell of the jail. The fully functional legal aid cell equipped with a good no. of books on Law, computers and printers is being operated by the inmates, for the inmates. We learnt through an interactive session that almost every work that is done in Tihar is done by the inmates only. May it be cleaning the premises, gardening, construction, pantry, arrangements for langar (community lunch) or working in the factories. ‘Factories?’ came an inquisitive expression from one of us. Bakery, handloom and textile, apparel, furniture, mustard oil, paintings, paper products are the units in which the inmates of Tihar find work during their stay. The sum total of the annual turnover of these units is 15 crores. The bakery alone marks a turnover of an approximate 3 crore per annum. The wages is deposited in their names, which is released when the inmate is released or is sent over to their respective families.

Each one of us utilized this opportunity in peeping inside the minds of the inmates. We tried to find out the difference between the life they spent outside and the life they are spending here. We came across different age groups, different charges, different social status and different versions of the stories . But now they all are sharing the same platform, they have formed a society within the walls. We tried to dig into the life in this society and if this society too face differences and conflicts in terms of status, caste, cultures, race and religions. All we got is variance in their answers.

As we all know ‘law is above any status or religion’ but is it truly impartial and not biased in following the protocols towards the inmates? Well, we need to pay a number of visits to find a satisfactory answer to the question posed above. Be it regarding parole and furlough or the sentence revision the inmates must be made aware of the rights they are entitled to. Hopefully the upcoming 32 page booklet would make available the badly required information, to every inmate. But to make sure that the information is made use of; is a duty of ours.

To remind us the motive of every prison I need to borrow the below lines -

“Any reforms must be based on the idea that a prisoner is not punished but reformed and made into a good citizen. If this objective is once accepted, it would result in a complete overhauling of the prison system.” - 

Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru in the book Prison Lands

Manish Bhardwaj