Supreme Court: Intervention In Prisons Must Ensure The Centre Exercises Responsibility

What Is The Case

● The Supreme Court first heard the suo motu writ petition In Re: Contagion of Covid 19 Virus in Prisons on March 16, last year, by a bench consisting of the then Chief Justice of India (CJI), S.A. Bobde, and Justice L. Nageswara Rao. It was a foresighted decision, given that the bench had taken note of the situation in the prisons well before the national lockdown was declared, and with only 107 people contracting the virus across the world.

● After a ten-month hiatus, a new bench comprised of the present CJI, N.V. Ramana, and Justices Rao and Surya Kant heard the case on Friday and released a slew of directives.

● According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), India's prison occupancy rate is 117.6%, with states like Uttar Pradesh and Sikkim having occupancy rates of 176.5 per cent and 157.3 per cent, respectively.

● Prison inmates are highly susceptible to infectious viruses, according to the Supreme Court, since the rate of ingress and egress in prisons is extremely high, particularly because people (accused, convicts, detainees, and so on) are brought to prisons on a daily basis.

Details

● On March 16 of last year, the court praised the efforts of Kerala's director general of prisons and Delhi's Tihar jail in testing, screening, and isolating cases before allowing new inmates to be admitted.

● The virus was tested on all 17,500 inmates in Tihar prison, and none of them showed any signs related to COVID-19, according to the bench. The bench recommended that prison-specific preparation and response plans be established in collaboration with medical professionals after emphasizing the importance of social distancing.

● At the state level, a monitoring team must be established to ensure that the orders released regarding prisons and remand homes are strictly followed.

● The feasibility of these preparation and response plans was not reviewed by the new bench that heard the case on Friday.

● The previous bench that heard the case had ordered each state/Union Territory to form a High Powered Committee (HPC) consisting of the chairman of the State Legal Services Committee, the principal secretary (Home/Prison), and the director-general of prisons to determine the class of prisoners could be released on parole or interim bail for such period as could be considered a reasonable period of time.

Courts Observation

● The HPC must follow the instructions in paragraph 11 of Arnesh Kumar v State of Bihar (2014), the bench ruled. The CJI-led bench reiterated this direction on Friday, stating that as the sentinel on the qui vive of fundamental rights, the court must strictly monitor and restrict the authorities' ability to arrest suspects in violation of the guidelines laid out in Arnesh Kumar.

● In this case, the court held that police officers should not apprehend the accused arbitrarily and that magistrates should not authorize detention on a routine basis.

● On Friday, the bench ordered the HPCs to release all of the inmates who had been released earlier pursuant to its last year's order, with reasonable conditions, in addition to considering new releases of prisoners based on the agreed-upon requirements.

● The bench ruled that prisoners who were given parole under the Supreme Court's previous orders should be granted parole for another 90 days.

● Prisoners who were released last year were ordered to return to jail due to a decrease in the number of active cases.

● In such exceptional circumstances, the authorities are directed to take into account the inmates' concerns. The authorities have been instructed to ensure that all detainees have access to adequate medical care. The spread of the COVID-19 virus in prisons should be monitored by routine monitoring of inmates as well as jail personnel, and prompt care should be made available to both inmates and staff, according to Friday's order.

● The CJI-led bench should have questioned authorities about why they did not obey its order last year to follow the Arnesh Kumar guidelines.

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