The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside caste-based discriminatory provisions of prison manuals in nearly a dozen states, which included the segregation of prisoners in separate barracks based on their castes.
It termed as unconstitutional the rules in jail manuals that mandate only upper castes cook food, Scheduled Castes, especially Mehtars, clean toilets, and discriminate on the basis of caste against convicts from denotified tribes and ‘habitual offenders’.
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“The state has a positive obligation to prevent such discriminations,” a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra held on a petition by journalist Sukanya Shantha, and directed states to amend their prison manuals within three months, submitting compliance reports.
The CJI said that references to habitual offenders shall be in reference to the habitual offender legislations, and all references to habitual offenders in state prison manuals are declared unconstitutional if based on caste. “We have held that assigning cleaning and sweeping work to the marginalised and assigning cooking to higher castes is a violation of Article 15,” the CJI said.
The plea referred to the Kerala Prison Rules, which distinguish between habitual and re-convicted convicts, holding that those who are by habit robbers, housebreakers, dacoits, or thieves should be classified and separated from other convicts.
In her petition, Shantha cited several instances where state prison manuals reinforce caste-based discrimination and determine the division of labour based on caste hierarchy. Until 2020, the Rajasthan Prison Rules, 1951, stated that convicts from the Mehtar caste would clean toilets and that cooks should be of the “non-habitual class”. “Any Brahmin or sufficiently high caste Hindu prisoner” was “eligible for appointment as cook”.
Another rule stated that prisoners “who object on account of high caste to eat food prepared by the existing cooks shall be appointed a cook”. In 2020, the Rajasthan High Court took suo moto cognisance of a report that Shantha had written on the issue, after which the Rajasthan government amended the prison manual.
Other instances of caste-based discrimination include the separation of Thevars, Nadars, and Pallars, who are allotted different barracks in the Palayamkottai Central Jail in Tamil Nadu. In one of its orders, the Madras High Court upheld this segregation as a means to prevent caste rivalries.
The West Bengal jail manual, Shantha pointed out in her petition, specifies that work in prisons should be designated by caste, such as cooking by dominant castes and sweeping by particular castes. According to Rule 694, interference with the genuine religious practices or caste prejudices of prisoners should be avoided. Rule 793 states that sweepers should be chosen from the Mehtar, Hari, Chandal, or other similar castes.
The Uttar Pradesh Prison Manual, 1941, amended in 2022, stated that the caste prejudices of prisoners should be maintained and cleaning, conservancy, and sweeping work should be designated based on caste. It retains the rule on preserving caste prejudices and segregating ‘habitual offenders’.
The Andhra Pradesh Prison Rules mandate that conservancy, or cleaning duties, shall not be extracted from prisoners who, owing to their caste prejudices, are not in the habit of performing such work. The Madhya Pradesh Jail Manual has similar caste-based provisions on conservancy.
First Published: Oct 03 2024 | 6:21 PM IST
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