Alarming rise in jail deaths

Advocate K Kesavan, who also works for the welfare of prisoners, and had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) regarding their plight at the Madras High Court, told DTNext that none of the prison officials have been made accountable for these deaths in the last one and half decades.  Even the customary Judicial Magistrate’s probe in cases of unnatural deaths, was conducted only in very few instances.

An application under the Right to Information Act by Kesavan revealed startling facts and figures and the poor state of affairs at the central and district prisons in Tamil Nadu. Several directions from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) are being violated as prison authorities either failed to or refused to provide timely medical assistance to ailing prisoners. 

“The police assault the accused in custody to extract the truth from them and then remand them to prison without proper medical check-up. There have been cases of remand prisoner deaths in Tamil Nadu prisons because of police torture during the course of arrest. But when the accused die in prison, nobody really cares,” Kesavan told this paper. 

Consider this. As per prison manual, every A class prison (with 500 or more prisoners) should have a Chief Medical Officer, seven assistant civil surgeons, six staff nurses, four pharmacists, six male or female nursing assistants, three lab technicians, two psychiatric counsellors and a junior assistant. But none of the central prisons or district prisons have medical personnel of this strength. 

At the Puzhal prison, (both blocks combined) there are only two medical officers, two counsellors and one psychiatrist. Only three staff nurses and one pharmacist have been deputed. The situation is much worse in other central prisons in the state. 

When a prison cannot not handle medical emergencies, they have the provision to refer the prisoner-patient to designated government hospitals. 

The Puzhal prison can refer patients to the Government Hospital in Royapettah, 21km away in the city. “By the time a critically ill patient is taken to Royapettah hospital from Puzhal, precious time is lost. Stanley Medical College is nearer to the prison and we have been repeatedly requesting with authorities that the hospital be designated for Puzhal prisoners,” Kesavan said. 

Sources also disclosed that most jails do not even stock on basic life-saving medicines like aspirin, used as first aid for cardiac patients. When contacted, Vijay Kumar, ADGP (Prisons), said, “I am right now somewhere else and cannot comment.”