A petition filed before the Delhi High Court has challenged the provision in law for corporal punishment of jail inmates for acts of indiscipline.
A Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad directed that the petition filed by advocate Harsh Vibhore Singhal be listed for hearing on May 23 along with another plea by the petitioner against solitary confinement in jails.
Mr. Singhal, in his plea, said certain provisions of the Prisons Act provide for punishments like whipping, restriction of food, penal diet, handcuffs, fetters and substitution of gunny or other coarse fabric for clothing for prisoners which is demeaning and against the Constitution.
“That impugned sections make prisoners vulnerable to corporal punishments having no nexus with misconduct and are disproportionate to any legitimate objective… Corporal punishments gravely infringe upon prisoners’ human and fundamental rights, are dehumanising and degrading and get compounded by the derisive sadistic laughter of obstreperous and vituperative prison masters supervising such punishments,” the plea said.
The Sections, the plea added, are ultra vires and in violation of Article 14 (Right to Equality), 19(1-a, to freedom of speech and expression), 20(2, no person shall be prosecuted and punished for the same offence more than once) and 21(protection of life and personal liberty) of the Constitution of India.
The petition further stated that such corporal punishments are designed to raise physical injury, pain and humiliation by infliction of physical wounds and destroy the hopes of reformation or rehabilitation.
It also argued that the sections are discriminatory and promote corruption and only those who are “unable to ingratiate officials” suffer.
The plea also highlighted that the fact that India has ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) says that all degrading treatment is prohibited.