Chennai
A division bench, comprising Justices S Nagamuthu and V Bharathidasan, while acquitting a police constable who fatally shot an accused while escorting him to the court, said “A close reading of the entire chapter will show that many of the provisions are either outmoded or impractical. The rule has travelled a distance of more than 62 years and it now struggles to serve its purpose.”
Based on this, the bench also directed the State to constitute a committee consisting of the Director General of Police, the Inspector General of Prisons, the Commissioner of Police and the State public prosecutor to frame appropriate rules governing the escort of prisoners as required under Section 9 of Prisoners (Attendance in Courts) Act, 1955.
It may be noted that the escort of prisoners confined in prison has been done all these years based on two government orders issued on July 15, 1908 and December 27, 1955, as part of the Tamil Nadu Prison and Reformatory manual. For low risk prisoners, the GO offers two constables as escort for either one or two prisoners. But for four prisoners once again a mere two constables are allowed. Similarly, for over four and not more than six prisoners, three constables are posted on escort duty and in the case of more than six and upto 10 prisoners, a head constable and four constables alone escort them.
The bench while expressing doubts as to whether these two archaic GOs would satisfy the legal requirements, said “Assuming that these two GOs could be enforced, in our considered view, they have become outmoded and ineffective by passage of time.”
The bench also insisted that it’s high time that the Government of Tamil Nadu had a relook into these rules and put in place new rules.
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