(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The verdict would assure freedom for only 16 in the overcrowded slammer and for hardly 180 others elsewhere in Gujarat.Ahmedabad — Friday’s Supreme Court order to jails to free all inmates who have served half their maximum term without trial may cheer the cockles of some 250000 prisoners in other states but is unlikely to provide any relief to the 12000-odd convicts and undertrials packed like sardines in the state’s 26 iron houses.
Sources in Ahmedabad’s high-security central jail where a list of possible beneficiaries was prepared on Saturday told Khaleej Times that the verdict would assure freedom for only 16 in the overcrowded slammer and for hardly 180 others elsewhere in Gujarat.
“Unlike in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh most inmates in Gujarat can afford to pay fines or manage to secure bail and hence there are not many left in the 26 jails who have completed half the maximum sentence they would receive if found guilty” said a high court advocate.
According to Iqbal Khan another well-known HC advocate more than two-thirds of India’s nearly four million prisoners were awaiting trial but many had already spent years in prison. He said the Indian laws state that prisoners awaiting trial must be released once they had served half the maximum sentence they would receive if found guilty but that law was rarely implemented.
There are some 12000 prisoners in Gujarat’s 26 jails including 3500 inmates in the 2500-capacity central jail in Ahmedabad.
Overcrowding in Gujarat’s prisons was highlighted even in by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India in its 2013 report which said that in 2003 there were 10148 prisoners in the various prisons against their capacity of 5489 prisoners.
The state government did build a few new prisons and the capacity had increased to 12218 prisoners but many jails still remain overcrowded. Indeed the norm for minimum space per prisoner in jails is 40sqft but the 1342 prisoners in Ahmedabad has only 17sqft of space for each inmate. What’s more the situation is no better in women’s barracks the Navsari jail in south Gujarat being the worst with 270 per cent overcrowding.
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