The doublespeak on the prison system

To be fair to the HM, jail has been a medium for some criminals to get back into society, like the 11 convicted for Bilkis Bano's gang rape

Normally one ignores speeches by politicians, but Union Home Minister Amit Shah's recent speech on prisons couldn't be ignored because the lofty ideas he expressed were such a contrast with reality.

Shah started off by lamenting that the prison system was "prone to abuse" because it was set up by the British to "subjugate political prisoners." But under Shah's home ministership, the number of people charged with sedition, a law used mainly to subjugate and imprison political dissenters, has increased. Shah took oath in May 2019. That year, sedition cases shot up to 93 from 70 in 2018. Last year, the number was 76.

Also Read | Free long-suffering undertrials

The enormity of the increase comes through when you consider that in 2014, the number of sedition cases was just 47. That year, Narendra Modi became PM and Amit Shah BJP president. The website 'Article 14' reports that between 2014 and 2020, there was a 28 per cent increase in sedition cases filed each year, compared to between 2010 and 2014. Also, a majority of the cases filed after 2014 were in BJP-ruled states.

The home minister then went on to speak about the importance of prisons, because crimes needed punishment. But his party men keep committing crimes, and so confident are they about not getting punished, that they circulate videos of themselves attacking and even lynching Muslims, Hindu-Muslim couples, and Christians praying inside their homes. Most of these acts take place in states ruled by the Home Minister's party.

A truly noble idea mentioned by Shah was the need to reform prisoners. Not everyone is a criminal by nature, he said. Incidents happen, people get involved. Jail administrations should ensure that "jails should become a medium for such people to get back into society."

Would the home minister tell us how many of those in jail yet to be tried, are "criminal by nature"? These innocents constitute 77 per cent of all prisoners. From 2016 to 2021, i.e., under the BJP rule, the number of undertrials has increased by 45.8 per cent.

According to the National Crime Research Bureau data, 18 per cent of these undertrials are Muslim, though the community comprises only 14.2 per cent of India's population. In BJP-ruled Assam, Muslims constitute nearly half, or 49.3 per cent of undertrials. Yet, only 40 per cent of Assam is Muslim. In tiny Uttarakhand, another BJP state, Muslims constitute 29.6 per cent of undertrials, more than double their population of 13.9 per cent. And in Yogi Adityanath's state, they constitute 25.89 per cent of undertrials, but their population stands at 19.26 per cent.

What does it mean to have been an undertrial? Meerut resident Naushad spent five months in jail after BJP supporters circulated a video of him allegedly spitting on the rotis he was making at a wedding in December 2020. They first punished him themselves by thrashing him. Then the police arrested him under the National Security Act as a threat to public order. In May 2021, the Home Ministry revoked the NSA charge and ordered his release.

Naushad went back to his employer, a Muslim caterer, who, despite believing in the 25-year-old's innocence, refused to take him back because of the video and the arrest.

So for Naushad, jail did not turn out to be a "medium to get back into society", though he was no criminal, and had spent only five months in prison on false charges. Yet, he was lucky, compared to Father Stan Swamy. The 84-year-old was refused bail after being thrown in jail under suspicion of having links with Maoists. When he fell ill, he asked to be sent back to his "society", to live among the Adivasis of Jharkhand. His wish remained unfulfilled; he died in a Mumbai hospital. Was the Jesuit priest a "criminal by nature"?

Then there's G N Saibaba, convicted in 2017 of having links with Maoists. Ninety per cent handicapped, the Delhi University professor has since been lodged in the airless Anda Cell of Nagpur Central Prison. The jail administration and the courts have made sure he doesn't get back into society, not even to visit his dying mother or attend her funeral.

To be fair to the home minister, though, jail has been a medium for some criminals to get back into society. Take the 11 convicted for Bilkis Bano's gang rape and the murder of 17 of her family members. Felicitated on their release, they were back at their shops immediately. Those arrested for lynching inspector Subodh Singh in a riot over suspected cow slaughter in Bulandshahr in December 2018, were similarly felicitated when released on bail; the main accused, a Bajrang Dal leader, even won panchayat elections in 2021. As always, our home minister knows what he's talking about.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.