Houses, families, income -- prisoners at the open jail here have all this and more.

By Rohit Parihar

They could describe themselves as fettered convicts, but look at them and you see free householders. Jan Pal Singh, for example, drives every morning to his travel business office in a chauffeur-driven Tata Sumo and returns to his house in the evening as any other businessman would. Or take his neighbour Sumer Singh, who has his own textiles dyeing factory with a turnover close to Rs 7 lakh a year. Having married in 1992, he became father of a bonny son earlier this year. Similarly, others leave home for work and return to their families in the evening. In this humdrum flow of life, this colony in Sanganer in Rajasthan seems no different from others all over the country.

But it is. This colony is not really the middle class residential cluster it appears to be. Jan Pal and Sumer, like the other residents, are prisoners serving out life sentences at the Sampooranand Open Jail. An open jail allows them the luxury of living in practical freedom with their families, the only caveat being that they are present in the camp after sunset. This is a small price to pay and the prisoners are loathe to jeopardise their new-found liberty by making wild escape attempts.

These men are the beneficiaries of the system in Rajasthan which permits a convict -- except for those charged with rape, dacoity, premeditated murder and dowry deaths -- to be shifted to an open jail on completion of a third of his term. But more often than not, due to space constraints, life convicts wait for about 11 years -- instead of the required six years and eight months -- before their transfer to an open jail. Last year, the state Government decided to ensure that the waiting period was cut down and for that the barracks and facilities at Sanganer and Bharatpur had to be expanded. However, there was a problem: funds. Director and IG (prisons) Arun Dugar hit upon the idea of asking the prisoners to build their own houses within the jail premises. It was an idea that was bound to succeed in Sanganer as it is an industrial township and, unlike Bharatpur, offers avenues for employment. Many prisoners applied for transfer to Sanganer; 12 have already built their houses there and 40 others have their blueprints ready.

One of those who put up a house was Mahesh Chowdhary, who was in his final year in law school when involvement in a student clash landed him in jail for life. Today, he drives a battered Lambretta scooter on teaching assignments and returns to a decent one-room apartment with a kitchen and toilet and amenities like cooking gas, a television set, a desert cooler and cane chairs. His small family stays with him during vacations. He spent Rs 18,000 on the house, but says it was money well spent. "My son was born three months after my arrest," he says. "That I am close to him and my family is what I've gained." Jagdish Prasad Sharma, now a truck owner, spent about Rs 50,000 on his house, but says a roof above his head has also allowed him to win the respect of the people of the locality.

Not that these houses are theirs forever. For there will come a time when the sentence runs out, and the prisoners have to leave Sanganer. Does this eventuality not bother them when they build houses? "It will offer shelter to other convicts who are like our brothers," says Ashok Parihar, a lifer who came to Sanganer with his convict brother, constructed a house in 1996 and has now settled down to a vegetable vendor's life. It is quite evident that constructing a house here is seen not as the end but the symbolic beginning of a new life.

Removed from the dehumanising environs of crowded jails, the inmates develop a sense of respectability and responsibility. Moti, Data Ram and Gir Raj recall how the inhabitants of the open jail gave them food and shelter when they reached Sanganer and continued to do so until they could start living on their own. Sanganer, in fact, has become an extended family, for, with freedom, the hatred in the hearts of these people has dissipated.

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