"We have sometimes to take tough decisions—even infringing some of our freedoms"
– Prime Minister AB Vajpayee,
November 11, 2002.
Jails are supposed to be reformatory in nature. But the gap between precept and practice is nowhere as evident as in jails, especially their Indian versions, which have stood this conventional wisdom on its head. There are often tales of the impunity with which notorious criminals run their empires from the confines of the jail or 'celebrity' criminals suddenly developing chest pain and spending the period of their sentence in some super-speciality hospital. The nexus between the criminal, police and the politician, at times aided by the judiciary, is so blatant as to be completely transparent. On the other hand, ordinary prisoners get brutalised regularly with the due connivance of the police and 'senior criminals'. And now comes the news of the police force in one of the 'best' jails in India, New Delhi's elite Tihar Jail (venue of many reformist exercises by the high profile cop Kiran Bedi) behaving as if they were foot soldiers of the Hindutva brigade.
A recent letter by India's leading human rights activists to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to "probe the communal policies of the Tihar authorities" (The Kashmir Times, 11 January, "Victims may forget torture but not verbal abuse") has once again brought into sharp focus the malady which afflicts the custodians of law. In a written complaint to the NHRC, prominent socialist leader Surendra Mohan, on behalf of the All India Defence Committee for Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani (the Delhi University lecturer who was acquitted by the Delhi High Court in the December 2001 parliament attack case), has demanded to "institute a probe into the deplorable conditions inside Tihar jail", making a pointed reference to the alleged practice of communalism inside the jail perpetrated by prejudiced jail authorities.