Author: Ms. Aprajita, LLM Student, IILM University, Greater Noida
ABSTRACT
Imprisonment involving denial of liberty of the individual signifies the societal disapproval of the violation of law by him. As such it cannot be denied that it has some punitive content and the system expects the prisoner to suffer some disabilities including his freedom of movement. Therefore one cannot expect the state of life in prison to be the same as in the free world. Restrictions on freedom are inevitable. Despite this position the system cannot ignore the fact that a prisoner is also a human being. Basic necessities of a human being should not be denied to him. Public interest in punishing him must be served. Indeed it is also in public interest that the individual is treated in dignity. So the law should strive to strike a balance between these equally competing interests. The present state of affairs in prisons are not conducive to strike this balance. The pathetic conditions of prisoners are not confined to India alone. This can be seen everywhere throughout the world. Brutality committed on prisoners are rampant everywhere. There is a tendency to degrade and insult prisoners. These people have to live under great disabilities imposed by the society. Under the mantle of discipline there is the senseless infliction of solitary confinement or confiscation of anything that could give semblance of recreation. This makes the prisons unpopular. Amidst such a scenario the prisoner rights assume significance. Identification of the essential rights a prisoner can claim during his incarceration is essential at this juncture. Various incidental rights available to prisoners are also to be identified keeping in view the fact that these rights cannot be made available to the prisoners in full as such a situation may defeat the very purpose of imprisonment. The courts have been doing their best to strike a balance between the conflicting interests. It is proposed to examine how much the courts have been successful in identifying and effectuating these rights.
The study shows that Judiciary was much cognizant of prisoners’ rights in all countries. Contribution of legislation was not substantial. It can be seen that the judiciary was influenced by the deliberations and recommendations made in the international human rights conventions. Apart from the international conventions the recommendation made by various Prison Reforms Committees in India also influenced Indian Judiciary especially the apex court. This is clear from the judgement delivered by the Supreme Court in relation to prisons rights. The judiciary made many inroads to this arena of prisoner rights through a value-oriented interpretation of the provisions contained in the Indian Constitution.
A. Introduction and Background to Research Effort
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, irrelevant of their nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights, without discrimination, as these rights are fundamental to us because we are human. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.
Universal human rights are often expressed and guaranteed by law, in the forms of treaties, statutes, customary international law, general principles and other sources of international law, for example, ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. International human rights law lays down obligations on Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.
Non-discrimination is a sine—qua-non principle in international human rights law. The principle is present in all the major human rights treaties and provides the central and articular theme of some of the international human rights conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Human Rights are those minimal rights which every individual must have against the State or other public authority by virtue of his being a ‘member of the human family’, irrespective of any other consideration. But the concept and meaning of ‘Human Rights’ is not as simple as stated above. According to Prof. Upendra Baxi the very term ‘Human Rights’ is indeed problematic. In rights- talk, the expression often masks the attempts to reduce the plentitude of its meanings to produce a false totality. One such endeavour locates the unity of all human Rights to some designated totality of sentiment such as human -‘dignity’, ‘well being’, and ‘flourishing’. Another mode invites us to speak of Human Rights as ‘basic’, suggesting that some others may be negotiable, even dispensable.
Those who are deprived, disadvantaged, and dispossessed may indeed find it hard to accept any justifications for the very notion of Human Rights that may end up in a denial of their right to be human. Yet another mode of tantalization makes us succumb to an anthropomorphic illusion that the range of Human Rights is limited to human beings; the new rights to environment take us far beyond such a narrow notion.
As descriptive ventures, such attempts at tantalization of Human Right reduce to a ‘coherent’ category of forbiddingly diverse world of Actual existing Human Rights, while as prescriptive ventures, such modes simply privilege certain values over others. In both cases, the normative complexity and outreach of Human Rights norms and standards are made to their historic futures to the demands of a uniform narrative. This, overall, obscures the contradictory nature of development of ‘Human Rights’. There is not one world of ‘Human Rights’ but many conflicting worlds.
The plurality and multiplicity of the expression ‘Human Rights’ is worthy of celebration only if we are able to designate the distinctive modes of the sustaining networks of meaning and the logics of popular action that protest against all forms of human violation. If the notion ‘Human Rights’ means many things to different people, these meanings need to be configured in some patterns without violating the richness of difference.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights promulgated by the United Nations, to which India was a party, proclaimed basic Human Rights, although it did not provide any machinery for their enforcement. The emphasis on Human Rights was not without its impact on our Constitution. The cruelties and infamies of the Nazi regime and the extermination of millions of people in gas chambers took place in times of war. In our own country gross acts of cruelty and barbarism, gravely threatening law and order, were perpetrated by members of different communities following the partition of India. These events in war and in peace left their mark on our Constitution.
The foundation of any democratic society is based on “Rule of Law”. The Rule of Law governs aspects of our State and its guaranteed by the provisions of Part III and other provisions of the Constitution. But if the citizens are largely illiterate and mediocrity is at premium, population explosion is nobody’s concern and the illiterate poor feel that extra hands in the family would be a small financial help, what happens to the Rule of Law? Our country is the best example of working democracy with the above mentioned evils at great strains, trying to keep the system work at tremendous odds. The laws in India have elaborate provisions for safeguarding the rights of prisoners, in order to assure him a just, fair and impartial trial. However, these rights are not available to the accused belonging to poor class and the same are being availed only by those belonging to elite class of the society, who has got the means to exploit those rights. Because of this reason, accused persons belonging to poor class are not able to get justice and on the other hand the people of means are able to get out of the clutches of law and they hold the key to unlock the door of the justice. Hence, because of this disparity in availability of the rights to different sections of the society, the weaker sections of the society are not able to avail the economic opportunities nor they are able to participate in the political processes and local decision making. Hence they are exposed to ill-treatment by institutions of State and the society. This has also made poor people more vulnerable to insecurity in life i.e. vulnerable to ill health, economic shocks, crop failure, policy- induced dislocations, natural disasters and violence. All these things have led to increasing of gap between poor class and rich class. However, if Democracy uses its mighty weapon of Rule of Law, which is foundation of any democratic society, to restore equality before law and balance of the economic structure, the problem of poverty, world’s greatest challenge, can be successfully met.
