Blog Details

Author - Associate Megha Motwani

Introduction

Solitary confinement requires an inmate to be restricted to one cell and has no contact or at least a very little contact, with other inmates. The critics call it inhumane, psychological torture that is hardly in line with rehabilitation. The reasons prisoners placed in isolation are many, it can be either to prevent them from fighting with another inmates or getting into fight with guards, like talking back to a guard or getting caught for doing something which they shouldn’t have been doing. Other times, prisoners are also thrown into the solitary confinement for not breaking any rules at all. Prisons have used solitary confinement as a tool to manage gangs, isolating people for simply talking to a suspected gang member. Prisons have also used solitary confinement as retribution for political activism. 

How was it created?

The concept of solitary confinement dates back to the late 18th and early 19th century when the British Government to create panic among the great freedom fighters built a jail which served as a colonial prison and was also known as “Kaala Pani or Black Water Jail” as the entire prison was surrounded by the sea, thereby, leaving no way for a prisoner to escape.

The cellular jail tells the story of infamous cruelty meted out to Indian political prisoners by Britishers   The cellular jail was especially used by the British to exile political prisoners to the remote archipelago during the struggle for Indian freedom. Many notable freedom fighters such as Bhatukeshwar Dutt and the renowned Veer Sawarkar and numerous other, were kept as prisoner here.  It was taken over by Japanese troops in 1942 during WW II and in a surprise turn saw many British troops as inmates.

Before and after the court order

Section 73 and 74 of Indian Penal Code 1860, provides for the solitary confinement and the time period limiting to which only can the prisoner undergo such rigorous punishment. The offender shall be kept in solitary confinement for any portion or portions of the imprisonment to which he is sentenced and not for the entire term of his punishment.

Limits:

Section 73

a. The confinement shall not exceeding three months in the whole in any case;

b. If the term of imprisonment is six months and not exceeding that then solitary confinement can be of one month;

c. If the term exceed six months and goes up to one year but not more than that then the confinement cannot exceed two months; and

d.Time not exceeding three months if the term of imprisonment shall exceed one year.

Section 74

a. Confinement shall in no case exceed fourteen days at a time;

b. If the term of imprisonment exceeds three months, the solitary confinement shall not exceed seven days in any month of the whole imprisonment.

It is important here to know that the Uttarakhand HC in the landmark case of “State of Uttarakhand v Mehtab, Sushil and Bhura” have abolished this more than a century old practice in the area of their jurisdiction to punish prisoners by keeping them isolated from other co prisoners and perform on them all kind of cruelty that one can think of.

Why was the order given?

The Uttarakhand HC bench believed that the punishment of solitary confinement:

1. Amounts to "torture and violation of the basic human rights" which is available to them on the account of being the human being

2. It violates the basic concept of common natural human dignity by denying the offender the basic human rights available to people in general.

3. It causes many significant mental illness and physical pain and suffering

4. It is unnecessary in many of the cases and mostly makes the case more worst.

Therefore, it leads to exhaustion of rights that are provided under the Constitution of India and the Prisons Act, 1894. Prisoners are the persons and they have some rights and do not lose their common constitutional rights. In the case of State of Andhra Pradesh v Challa Ramkrishna Reddy, the Supreme Court said that a prisoner, whether he is a convict, under-prison does not cease to be a human being; prisoners are entitled to all his fundamental rights provided by the Constitution of India including the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution and thus, no law shall stop them from enjoying such rights.