During the fourth phase of the national general elections held yesterday in India, the state government of Rajasthan has resorted to controversial security measures. On the pretext of ensuring safety, the police ‘sanitised’ the state by imprisoning hundreds of poor people. Of those arbitrarily imprisoned, there are a large nu mber of young migrants, who have come to the cities in the state for employment.
Migrant youth, struggling to make a living by plying cycle carts, rag-pickers who live on footpaths, boys doing odd jobs for caterers — sleeping outside the restaurants where they work and living in crowded rented rooms or at the railway station — were taken into custody by the police. Many were informed that they were taken to the police stations to record their names for the elections. Once inside the police vehicle, they had no choice but to find themselves arbitrarily detained.
Correction centres in India are infested with debilitating problems. Of the 109 prisons in the state, Rajasthan has just one reformatory for young offenders, also called a Borstal. It is in Ajmer, central Rajasthan. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, the primary objective of the Borstal is to: ‘ensure care, welfare and rehabilitation of young offenders and to keep them away from the contaminating atmosphere of the prison. The emphasis is on education, training and moral influence, conducive for their [detainees’] reformation and the prevention of crime’.
Rajasthan’s Borstal is an apology for a centre for reformation. About 10 kilometres away from the city of Ajmer, beside the National Highway No. 8, this institution is nothing more than a dumping ground for young men, aged between 18 and 21 years. Of the 38 detainees who are locked in the rooms resembling military barracks without facilities and released in the vast campus twice a day for three hours each like animals, three have been convicted for murder. Four others are serving a sentence ranging from seven to ten years. The rest, that is thirty-one detainees, are arrested under Section 109 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (Cr.P.C).
Over the centuries, various theories of punishments have emerged: from the primeval theory of retribution, to the medieval theory of deterrence, to the modern theory of reformation. However, there is nothing in the work-schedule or in the environment or infrastructure at the Borstal to indicate that it is a reformatory.
The security inside the Borstal is left to the Home Guards whose service is of a purely temporary nature. The jail staffs consider it their sole duty to ensure that none of the inmates escape and that the food rations are disbursed regularly. A piece of washing soap, weighing 80 grams, is given once in three weeks to each inmate for bathing as well as washing clothes.
A day in the life of these young men in custody begins by being unlocked at seven in the morning. They are given a fistful of roasted grams and allowed to make a cup of tea. Between seven and eleven in the morning they are expected to bathe, wash, clean the barracks and prepare lunch. The lunch is nothing more than a bowl of lentils and six rotis(Indian bread) for each detainee. Then they are again locked-up till three in the evening. Between three and six in the evening they are again released and made to water the trees, collect firewood (cooking gas is carefully rationed), and pull out weeds from the campus. At six they are again locked-up till seven the next morning.
There is one television set in the Borstal that shows only state-sponsored channels. The only other recreation is a carom board. There is no library, no educational programme or skill-based training in the Borstal. The Borstal has a huge workshop meant to provide training to young detainees in at least five trades. But the huge edifice has never been unlocked ever since it was built. The tools and the equipment are rusted and falling apart from non-use. There is no work program to keep the detainees occupied with constructive activities, except cooking their own meals, watering the trees and picking up weeds.
The medical care is pathetically dismal and almost non-existent. A compounder makes a daily visit late in the evening. Many inmates suffer from chronic ailments for which no treatment is provided. A week before, a detainee slit his wrist out of sheer frustration.
The medical treatment the sick inmates receive is an injection that puts them to sleep for several hours. When they wake up, the symptoms persist and there is not the slightest improvement in their health. The Chief Medical Officer, who is stationed at the Central Jail at Ajmer, which is about 10 kilometres away, is not even aware of what is happening at the Borstal. The Senior Medical Officer has left on a long leave because “the condition of the jail is terrible.”
The law as such — Section 109 of the Cr.P.C — under which many of the detainees are held in the Borstal, is well intentioned. It provides for both, vital as well as the desired urgency, to prevent a potential offender from causing hurt to the society by an unlawful act. But on account of the same urgency the enforcement of this law is wrought with dangers that violate the fundamental rights of the common man. The case of the 31 young men held at the Borstal is an example.
Section 109 Cr.P.C is misused with impunity on the pretext of preventing crime during religious festivals and fairs. For instance, during the Urs Mela, a popular festival of the Muslims, and the Pushkar Mela, a festival of the Hindus, many so called important personalities from all over the country visit Ajmer. The state police on the pretext of ensuring the safety of the more important citizens of the country, round-up the lesser mortals — the migrant population — who come to the cities from the villages seeking jobs and lock them up in detention centres along with other convicts.
The authorities — police officers, prison officials, judges, prosecutors and lawyers — misuse Section 109 Cr.P.C. This provision of law reads: [w]hen an Executive Magistrate receives information that there is within his local jurisdiction a person taking precautions to conceal his presence and that there is reason to believe that he is doing so with a view to committing a cognizable offence, the Magistrate may, in the manner hereinafter provided, require such person to show cause why he should not be ordered to execute a bond, with or without sureties, for his good behavior for such period, not exceeding, one year, as the Magistrate thinks fit. Instead, the authorities often detain the person.
Charged with vagrancy under Section 109 of the Cr.P.C, many poor young men are taken into ‘preventive custody’ at the time of important festivals and occasions like the election. The police use Section 109 indiscriminately to haul in people even when they are not potential law-breakers, thereby restricting their freedom of movement and demoralising them by shoving them into detention centres. Most of these detainees will remain in custody until the place cannot hold anymore persons. At some stage, the officers would let off a few detainees, chosen at random, to make way for the newcomers.
The process gets the seal of approval from the office of the Executive Magistrate, who approves the release without holding any enquiry. The arbitrariness and the illegality in the procedure and the lack of legal assistance to the detainees have let this illegal process to continue for decades. Of the 38 young men incarcerated at the Borstal, 31 (detained under Section 109) will be held for periods varying from six months to a year.
Ninety-five percent of the young men held in the Borstal are illiterate. Had there been a literacy program for them, when released, at least they would have had better prospects of employment. The slates provided by the government to teach the detainees to read and write are kept safely locked up in some cupboard in the Borstal.
The lethargy and loss of morale of the system is reflected in the Borstal staff. They discourage and prevent any voluntary agency that is willing to take up a literacy program for the inmates in the Borstal. Once the inmates are released, they re-enter the society labelled as criminals and often trained to commit crimes.
The law in India thus is practiced in such a way that the statutory provision intended to prevent probable crimes is misused to create potential criminals. It is only a mere irony of reality that the democratic process in the largest democracy of the world is yet another occasion for the initiation of this education and graduation for many poor men.
