NEW DELHI, India—Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) notes with concern the critical nature of the health of [Bhai] Jagtar Singh Hawara suffering from severe ailment in his spinal cord. Despite several representations to the prison authorities, little has been done to see that Mr. Jagtar Singh Hawara—who is undergoing life imprisonment till “death” in Tihar Jail, “High Risk Ward” gets immediate and timely special medical care.
True to the abysmal conditions in Tihar jail where there is a high rate of death in jails the doctors have administered pain killers to which has brought little relief to Hawara, who is at the moment unable to move without a wheel chair.
The letter written by Dal Khalsa to New Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Shri Najeeb Jung states clearly that Hawara has been complaining of severe pain in his spinal cord and legs and is totally rendered to wheelchair.
The indifferent attitude of the jail authorities is alarming as it is a common practice in prisons throughout the Indian subcontinent that prisoners, especially political prisoners, are not given timely treatment till it becomes certain to the authorities that such prisoners won’t survive. These are ingenious ways through which the repressive state apparatus ensures the cold and calculated murder of many political prisoners. Only the organized struggles of prisoners for their rights have pushed the authorities to follow some aspects of the Jail Manual. Needless to say, prisons in the Indian subcontinent despite its claims have never been reformatory. Prisons in the age of the penal state have become much more a center of mistreatment, torture and discrimination.
If this is the state of affairs in the much show-cased Tihar Jail in New Delhi, we can understand the abysmal, dehumanizing conditions prevalent in the prisons of Jammu, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Orissa. Bihar is one of the regions where high rates of deaths in prisons have been reported. But there are hardly any serious injuries into the causes of such alarming rates of deaths in prisons.
Given the insensitivity of the prison authorities where men who suck the sweat and blood of people and have earned a fortune out of their lives get five star facilities when the system runs out of options and lodge them in jails while the rest including the political prisoners are made to endure the worst dehumanizing conditions.
The present case of Jagtar Singh Hawara is a classic case of such inhuman neglect and sadism. It is important that Hawara be given immediate medical care and that he be shifted to a premier hospital like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi for special investigation and timely quality health care that can save his life. We consider every delay in taking Hawara for medical treatment as a meditated attempt on the side of the authorities to see to it that he perishes inside the four walls of prison. We demand immediate intervention for the authorities in this regard that he be taken to the hospital for treatment and that he be allowed to stay in the hospital till the ailment is rectified or addressed with. Not providing the proper medical treatment to a prisoner is inhuman and violation of prisoner’s human rights as well as the jail manual.
In Solidarity,
SAR Geelani
President
Amit Bhattacharyya
Secretary General
Rona Wilson
Secretary, Public Relations
