A Field Trip to Central Prison

June 8th, 2010, during my final trimester at law school, I desired to have as much fun as I could, nevertheless, it was just an another lousy morning; packed my books, went to the library to work on an self-imposed assingmnet, though I knew I had an option to replace it with the field trip to Central Prison, Timkur, (near Bangalore – Tamil Nadu, border) which was arranged on the same day by our beloved professor Tagore (Retd., D.G.P), a former IPS officer, a fantastic person too. He was keen on taking our class on this trip with the sole intetnion of making us meet and interact with the prisoners so that he thought it might help us learn about them, their life and the circumstances which drove them to commit such crimes and make us analyse these in comparison to the adequacy and efficiency of the law which deals with them. Basically he wanted this trip to be a practical knowledge to supplement the theoritical studies we have had learnt related to the criminal system. The trip was connected to our seminar course

I was not initially going to attend the trip but one of my friends, Vikram Hedge, a good human being too, (who cleard his prelims in the recently held exam in his very first attempt and a very promising civil servant; who exhibits great enthusiasm and involvement in social service which he pretty much proved in his 5 year stint in law school by his selfless service through Legal Service Clinic, a committee which caters to the need of the illiterate and economically weak people who seek legal advice, free of cost) gave me a ring and asked me to join the class for the trip and when I was half-minded and couldn't decide if I should go, he reminded me about how it was the last trip we would go together in group as a class and said this trip might turn out to be a memorable one too and it did ofcourse. I immediately changed my mind, then rushed to the spot where the bus was overloaded with my classmates and a car in which my Professor and Vikram were waiting. I joined them in time and from there we started our journey embarking on our field trip.

It was a long journey from our university to the prison. Our Professor was received with a prestigious welcome outside the Central prison. We entered into the prison through a small gate, however, insise, there was a huge hall where we were made to form a queue and frisked and ordered not to carry any electronice instruments into the interior section of the cell and the Jail officials imprinted some mark on our right hand which was for identification pupose, before we were allowed freely to go further inside. As we entered in, I saw a board across the wall which not only looked funny but also morbid. The funny part was it resembled a hotel menu but it contained the particulars about the crimes like, the nature of it, and by whom those were committed, and the age of the person, and number of convicts and aquittals. The morbid part was that number of persons who were awarded death penatly too were put up. As we all progressed towards the interior section , they unlocked a huge gate and we saw a road in the middle of it leading to an open ground sorrunded by different cells with different type of prisoners in it whom all we met. However, for the sake of this blog, I cant write everything about so I will confine to relevant part of my visit. The Interesting prisoner I met in the prison and possibly everyone of us met was

Swami Shraddhananda

We met Swami Shraddhananda popularly called “Godman” Shraddhananda. He was kept in a reasonably comfortable single bed-ed and attached toilet room. He became very notorious in early 1990s for his brutal killing of his wife (who was an ex-wife of a former Indian ambassador to Australia and Iran and daughter of Mysore dewan) in a property dispute involving crores of money. He buried her alive in a coffin in the backyard of his house. Interestingly, my professor was one among the squad which investigated the crime. He even told us how when he found the coffin in the backyard during the investigation, he saw scratch marks of the finger nails of the victim on the bottom of the lid of the coffin and on the discovery of it they came to the conclusion that the victim was buried alive. So far I have only read about his case while preparing for my criminal law exam. This was the guy about whose case I read and discussed amongst fellow students and professor in the class . Until this day, I have seen only this guy’s photograph in newspapers and never expected I would meet him personally and it was was quite an experience. Mr shradhananda, when interacting with us, said, “if I had not killed my wife, she would have killed me”, so he apparently justified the murder on the ground of self-defense. In this case the Supreme Court had a split judgment . First it opined that this case falls under the rarest of the the rare cases in which case sure Sharadhdhananda deserved death penanlty. Justice Katju upheld the death sentence awarded to the convict by the Karnataka High Court. Finally Justice Sinha held that Shraddhananda deserved life imprisonment (As per statute, life imprisonment means 14 years of imprisonment)in this case the Court gave a new interpretation to the life imprisonment and held it means 'imprisonement until he dies'.

The former ‘Godman’ talked with good logic of his own in such eloquence that he sounded as if whatever he did perhaps could be justified. But I am not saying I bought his argument, yet I did wish to stay a little longer with him and listen to his talk and his views and ideas about life, especially when he said “you may only remove a brick but you can’t remove the pillar because if you do, then the whole building will collapse”. Apparerently the brick by which he referred to himself and the pillar he meant the rest ‘majority’ of the society. Well I could not agree with him more. I thought he was just the unfortunate one and there sure are many out there who aren’t as good unfortunate as the former Godman. As we were interacting with him, the Jail autorities wanted to cut short our conversation and take us to a different cell. So as we were leaving his cell, we heard him say to us, ‘Be Good huh?’. We all immediately burst into laugh!

During our conversation with Mr, Shraddhananda, he told us something which really disturbed me. He said that the ultimate aim of man on this earth was to live in peace and that he was enjoying his life in the prison since the Government has provided him everything a man wanted to live in peace. The environment where he lived stood testimony to what he said (I am not saying he be put in a solitary confinement or given barbaric treatment however I din't feel all right when I saw a notorious criminal who had done a heinious act, had no sense of regret nor guilt of what he did and has been provided with all facilities to live a peaceful life. I Stood still for a momenet and what went in mind in a fraction of second was the thought that ever since the missing complaint of the murdered wife filed by her first daughter, it took more than a decade, after beating around the bush, for the highest Court of the land to pronounce Judgment awarding life imprisonment to the former Godman. I thought of the pain both mentally (bearing the pain of losing someone dear to your heart) and physically(besides your personal schedule, attending to the court proceedings as and when necessary or else one might end of facing the severe legal consequences) the family of the victim had to incur to struggle through the legal battle to get the final verdict. I thought of the nightmare of the brutal murder which would have haunted (and possibly continue to haunt in the future )all through the years when they were fighting the case. I thought of the time and effort spent and put by the lawyers day and night to bring justice to the family of the victim. I thought about the hell lot of money the family in turn had to pay for the lawyers as a fee for it. In country like India, very influential person like Godman would have easilty got away with any number murders by flautning political connections if the victim was an ordinary women. Because victim belonged to a elite calibre, atleat after a decade, the Supre Court gave the final verdict but for whatever reasons, the highest court of land by giving a new interpretation for life imprisonment, it held that the Godman be put in jail until his death only to hear from the Godman himself that he is living in peace. Wow. We the common citizens are the one who live under the delusion that the justice is being done.

Under Trials

They are who are alleged to have done petty offences and aprrended by the police and put under judicail custody which is technically nothing but lingering in jails untill their cases appear before the Court for hearing beofore they are finally decided. If, say, the offences charged against them are proved before the Court of law, the punishment of imprisonment period would not be as long as the period during which they were kept in the jail in the name of Judicial Custody. This is because due to not having proper recourse to good lawyers because they can’t afford having one. When I asked a Jail official who was with us as to why not provide state legal services to these people, his response to me was that such legal services were only paper laws and were very ineffective in praxis. What could be worse is think of a situation where if any of the under-trials is taken to Court and pronounced non-guilty. Nothing could be more ridiculous, because he had already served imprisonment in jail and hence punished for which he would have had to incur only if he had actually committed the crime!

Women Prisoner

We met a woman who was convicted for alleged murder. She was in a room backing some bread. We were given a few breads to have. It was very tasty. She said she has been serving the sentence for 4 years since she was put in jain and would have to spend for another 7 years or more odd years. Her side version of the case was that she never murdered anyone. She was, basically, indebted to the person whom she had been accused of allegedly having murdered. The murdered, she said, kept harassing her sexually. Once, when she went to return the due money, he had tried to molest her and when she tried to protect her body by forcing his away from her, the victim fell ramming against a rock and died. There was no evidence to prove that she used any kind of weapon which proves she had no intention to murder but despite that she was convicted of murder. This reflects the poor quality of lawyer who represented her and she could not have afforded a better one since she belonged to a labour class family. As we left the kitchen, real life incidents like these imposing so many responsibilites upon me and I thanked Vikram for it and before even I finished thanking him, Professor said to us, ‘It is by helping people like them you can see the real pleasure out of education you get in University”. I can still hear the words and it was not the only best thing he ever said. Professor like Tagore and classes and field trips with him are a few good examples to make me feel ‘I miss law school’.

Atociticies against Minorities

This case is a very ubiquitous one. This is about person ‘X’ who comes from a low caste (schedule caste) who basically was asked to vacate his home by a dominate-Hindu caste person since the latter needed the land on which the former had built his house. But the ‘X’ refused to leave since for anyone his or her home is everything , it is something one attaches to himself emotionally spiritually and culturally. But the Dominanat caste person needed the land badly for whatever reason (possibly there could be an economic angle to it) so he had set fire to the house of the low caste man and filed complaint on the very same low caste man for such an act. The police framed a charge against the low caste man acting in consortium with the dominant cast people. Guess what! The low caste man is in jail facing the charge that he set his own house on fire and of felony and he is doing is labor work in the jail so that he can earn and send the money to his children who are going to school whereas the real culprits have gone scot free. This is a one such hard reality of the present scenario of the downtrodden even more than six decades after we got Independence.

Old women prisoners

For a second, I mistook the cell for a parental home. None would believe that these old, feeble, humans would even have the capacity to think criminally. When we interacted with them, the offenses for which these old people, most of them were octogenarian, being tried were, nevertheless, shocking, . Everyone surrounded our professor and started crying unaware about the purpose for which we were there, yet, our Professor did his best by genuinely listening to as many of theirs' problems as he could while we all stood by and watched and it was such a moving scene to watch when our professor had to leave after spending a reasonable period of time, the old women prisoners wanted our professor to stay for more time to listen to them and all of them wept in chorus so loud that it looked like a funeral event.

But honestly I thought it is better for these old women to be here in prison since they anyway get regular food to eat and place to reside than to go out and to try to live with the one who don’t love them anymore! I have seen worst where people just abandon their parents on the street. I once encountered an old lady near majestic circle, Bangalore with severe bruises all over hands and head and she was completely at a loss. She din't even know where she was heading to and had no strength to even utter a word properly. I, at first, called up vikram who gave me a women helpline contact number, then I, as per their advice, took her to a nearby police station and handed her over to them. I have read in books that old aged people even get murdered if they are considered burdensome by younger generation of her own. So relatively the women in the prison were, I thought, having a reasonably comforatable life. But like they what you see is not real, so I understood why they were all crying. It’s a prison with police watching them and they are tagged as a crimianls and are afraid of being punished anytime and above all they are too old don’t have anybody to take care of them, genuinely! I haven't looked into each and every of the case, so I know it is wrong for me to take side and say just because they are old they cannot be the culprits, at the same time I cannot rule out the possibility of them becoming the victim out of the today's socio-cultural and economic condition of a family. All I could hear from their cry is that 'we know we will not be accepted by our family but least take us away from this hell, the prison. we all walked away helplessly and I felt so pathetic, thinking of it even now.

Finally we had a formal group discussion in a conference hall with higher officials before we finished with our trip. A few amongst us who came for the trip felt deceived since they were eagerly looking for a good lunch at a star hotel after the trip which was the tradition during every previous field trips. It was quite funny to see those dejected faces.This feild trip was more of an educational visit and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and it was an once in a life time opprutunity and I felt so thankful to two persons - one was, the professor for arrranging this trip and and the other was Vikram for asking me to join them. And as usual I always enjoyed the ride-back-home feeling on the way back. there is something special in the journey back after any visit. take a lonely seat, put your head phones on, listen to your favourte music, close your eyes, and you hear at the background, the sound of the air when the high-speed bus zooming through it while you let the pictures of the trip replay in your mind and you wake up only to know you are at gate no: 3.