Sunday, Jan 12, 2003
Sunday, Jan 12, 2003 |
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Tamil Nadu
By V.S. Palaniappan
Though judicial circles described the visit as ``routine and periodical'', the exercise came in the wake of disquieting reports about the peace in the prison. It was said to be a fallout of representations made by undertrials in the Coimbatore serial bomb blasts case to R. Sivakumar, judge of the special court, and of telegrams and petitions sent by counsel for the Al-Umma undertrials to the principal district sessions judge. Accompanied by G. Doss, Superintendent of Central Prison, Mr. Thanikachalam and Mr. Mohandoss spent nearly an hour and a half, talking to the prisoners besides inspecting living conditions and medical facilities. The judges also held talks with the seven Tamil extremists, who had gone on fast for the past couple of days protesting alleged assault on some of the prisoners by a section of warders on January 3. The extremists, led by Pavannan, a POTA case accused, and including Iniyan Sampath, Amirthalingam, Selvam, Sathiyamurthy, Shivakumar and Muthukumar (all the six were arrested in connection with the Vellithiruppur police station attack case, and facing trial on charges of being associates of the forest brigand, Veerappan, in the actor Rajkumar abduction case), gave a written representation seeking the action against the warders concerned. Following an assurance given by the judges they ended the fast. The judges spoke to the injured prisoners and also went round the high security block, which housed religious militants. The Al-Umma undertrials complained of ``high-handedness'' by the police deployed in the peripheral areas of the prison and cited the seizure of cellphones from Soofiya Maudany, wife of the Kerala-based People's Democratic Party chairman, Abdul Nasir Maudany (an undertrial in the serial blasts case). The undertrials made no serious complaints against the prison administration but took exception to the deployment of 60 new warders alleging it was trying to intimidate them by having a large number of security staff. They also objected to deployment of warders, who were already facing charges of excesses committed during 1998-2000, now under CB-CID investigation. The undertrials pleaded for ending the practice of ``shadowing'' the inmates especially when they met family members. The undertrials complained that ``incorrect newspaper reports'', showing them in a poor light, were leaked by the officials with an ``ulterior motive''. They submitted that newspapers were publishing items on prison unrest in a big way but failed to give equal prominence to the version of the accused or the prison administration. The prison officials also told the judges that the accused did not relish the enforcement of the jail manual in letter and in spirit, leading to complaints of unrest.
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