WASHINGTON: A pernicious class system pervades the Indian Prison system where poor people are more likely to be mistreated and tortured than their upper class Counterparts according to a prominent US human rights expert. Torture in police custody is widespread and magistrates seem to remand suspects to police custody in a near automatic fashion says Arych Neier executive director of Human Rights Watch. He was in India last month to study prison conditions for a report. His most vivid impression of the Indian prison system is the pervasiveness of a class system that automatically discriminates against people from a poor socio-economic background. Neier collected his information by interviewing ex-prisoners doctors lawyers and Indian human rights activists in Calcutta Delhi and Bombay. He was not allowed to visit a single prison despite promises by government officials in Delhi. I am disappointed with their (officials) attitude. Everyone kept shifting me to the other. Nobody said not but I did not get access. There were a million excuses he said in an interview at his Washington office. The evasiveness of authorities surprised him because he was not on 8 missions to uncover something new but only what is already widely known and published in India. Neier visited India earlier this year leading a team from Asia Watch which included the former US ambassador Harry Barnes. Asia Watch is a part of the larger Human Rights Watch. The second visit was from Oct. 10 to 24 when he had wanted to study prison conditions. Indian Jail manuals divide prisoners in three categories class A B and C Class. A covers political prisoner held for nonviolent crimes. But class B includes people of the upper classes without making any reference to the type of crime. Class C covers the rest of the suspects. When someone is arrested and has a lawyer his most important function 1s to argue that his client is a class B prisoner Neir said Class B prisoners get adequate food a charpa to sleep on and reading material. But class C prisoners do not get a survival duct and they sleep on the floor. In order to get extra food their families have to bribe prison guards. The prisoners themselves are subjected to enforced servitude and have to perform sexual and other favours for other prisoners and guards.
it is truly humiliating and degrading. I was startled by the pervasiveness of torture in police custody and the many deaths that occurred there He could not understand the use of torture since confessions obtained in police custody are not admissible information obtained during the confession can be used against the suspect. Another feature of the Indian prison system that struck the US activist was mixing of under trials convicts and juveniles. In some cases there were no separate buildings for women prisoners and they were being held on the same grounds as men. There were cases where a rape victim has been held in prison so she would not run away while the alleged rapist was at large. In the Presidency Jail in Calcutta about 200 mentally handicapped women were being held in a large cage with no facilities at all. Other prisoners were sent to this so-called lunatic cell as punishment. There was little use of solitary confirment as punishment within the system. Dalit Voice
Article extracted from this publication >> February 15, 1991
