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Centre, Delhi Govt. asked to reply on Tihar `mess'

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI FEB. 25. The Delhi High Court today issued notices to the Union Government, the Delhi Government and the Tihar jail authorities on a public interest litigation seeking directions for improving conditions in the jail.

The petitioner L.R. Luthra, a criminal lawyer in the High Court, said that the undertrials or convicts lodged there were packed like sardines inside the jail.

The procedures for meeting the inmates are so cumbersome that it requires the family members to visit the jail authorities to get permissions for meeting their relatives in the jail.

The petitioner suggested that the jail manual should be amended to make a provision allowing the relatives of inmates to take permissions over telephone to meet their family members in the jail.

It sounded absurd in the age of e-governance that the inmates' relatives had to travel long distances just for permissions to meet their near dear, he said.

The toilets are right in the cells in the open making it quite difficult for the inmates to answer the call of nature befitting a human being, the petitioner said.

Another suggestion to which the petitioner drew the attention of the court was to release those convicts on bail who had spent halves the sentences and whose appeals are pending in the High Court for disposal.

Referring to the professionals like doctors and engineers serving sentences in the jail, the petitioner sought the court's direction to allow them to go out during daytime to serve people because their talents were going to waste inside the jail.

He also urged the court to direct the jail authorities to allow the inmates to send their earnings made inside the jail to their family members so that the latter could mitigate their hardships to some extent. At present, they are required to deposit their earnings to the jail authorities till they served out their full sentences.

A Division Bench comprising Justice Usha Mehra and Justice Pradeep Nandrajog asked the three respondents to file their replies by April 4.

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