States: Kerala; An Amnesty Gone Awry

A well-intentioned scheme in Kerala to release long-serving prisoners gets enmeshed in political bickering.

Inmates at the Thiruvanthapuram Central Jail

On a rainy night 12 years ago, 19-year-old Suresh Kumar returned home, stoned out of his wits. For much of the day, he had been smoking marijuana with his friends, and it was close to midnight when his friends virtually carried him to his bed and left him there. Shortly thereafter, Kumar was awakened by the relentless wail of his sick two-year-old nephew. A semi-conscious Kumar leapt out of his bed, grabbed the baby, ran out of the house and in a flash of blind rage threw him into a nearby well. Kumar was arrested later for homicide and subsequently convicted for life.

RELEASE ORDER

The Contradictions

The 1995 panel said no forbidden category prisoners should be let off.
BUT the current committee says this is against principles of natural justice.

Government tells the Assembly that no forbidden prisoners were released.
BUT Justice Menon says many such prisoners had been released.

The BJP says six convicted CPI(M) activists were set free.
BUT Justice Menon says political affiliations were not considered.

Kumar is now a free man, as are another 610 life-term convicts who were let off in batches during the past one year following the recommendations of a Jail Review Committee (JRC) set up by the Marxist-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) Government in September 1996. Last year, the JRC, headed by former Kerala High Court Chief Justice T. Chandrashekara menon, had prepared a list of life-termers who had served over eight years in various jails of the state and recommended that they be released. While 460 prisoners were let off last year, another 150 were freed in June this year.

But now the government finds itself in the midst of a controversy following charges that it had been discriminatory in the release of prisoners. In an unprecedented incident, on July 8, nine prisoners -- all serving life terms for killing women or children -- went on a hunger strike inside the Thiruvananthapuram Central Jail. Their grouse was that they had all served over eight years and therefore ought to be released like the rest. After a week's fast, all nine were shifted to a local hospital.

The controversy arose following the decision of the JRC to circumvent some of the guidelines issued by the state government while preparing the list of prisoners for release. The committee was prompted to take this unusual step after the relatives of Suresh Kumar, including his brother -- the father of the dead child -- approached Menon with a plea for his release since he had already served 12 years. "We know our brother did it under the influence of drugs and he has already paid a price. He should be given a chance to lead a normal life," they had pleaded.

The government guidelines to the JRC had, however, stated, among other things, that those who were serving time for killing women, children or prison officials or for committing murder during communal violence were not to be included in the list. But following the plea from Kumar's family, Menon and the other three official members of the committee -- an IG, a dig of Police and a government secretary -- took the radical decision to give concessions while preparing a list of 610 life-term prisoners to be released. "We felt that the guidelines arbitrarily violate principles of natural justice as they do not exempt even murders committed on impulse or under emotional disturbance, duress, hallucination or schizophrenia," says Menon, who is also a leading civil-rights activist.

The nine prisoners who went on a hunger fast meanwhile shot off a memorandum to Chief minister E.K. Nayanar in which they said: "We have been denied freedom while many who have committed worse crimes have been released." The memorandum included the names of some prisoners who were released despite having fallen under the "forbidden" categories. The opposition was quick to hurl charges that the Government had cleared the release of those who were sympathetic to the ruling party, while still keeping in jail all others. Says Palode Ravi, Congress MLA and a member of the state Legislative Committee on Prisons: "At every prison that we visited, we were flooded with complaints of political discrimination in the granting of remission and parole."

For once, the Congress and the BJP found themselves on the same side. Says BJP general secretary P.S. Sreedharan Pillai: "There are still many prisoners who have served up to 18 years and have not been granted remission because they have no political connections." According to him, at least six CPI(M) workers who had jumped bail or committed crimes while on bail were released on June 1 from Central Prison, Kannur, while four convicts who had belonged to opposition parties and were convicted for murdering CPI(M) workers in different incidents have been denied release despite being recommended by the JRC.

Justice Menon, however, scoffs at such suggestions. "We did not look at the political affiliations of the prisoners while preparing the list of people to be released. If there has been any discrimination, I am not aware of it." The chief minister has dared his opponents to come up with evidence to prove the charges. Says P.R. Chandran, ADGP (Human Rights): "Our job was only to release those recommended by the committee and cleared by the governor. And that's all we have done."

When the issue rocked the state Assembly, Nayanar appeared to compound the problem by saying that no prisoners from "forbidden category" has been released. And then in typical fashion, went on to take a dig at the opposition even as he skirted the main issue. "Unlike Congressmen, we have undergone prison terms many times in the past and understand the feelings of prisoners."

The Congress-led opposition is now charging that the chief minister had deliberately misled the assembly by stating that nobody from the "forbidden category" had been released. Justice Menon, however, thinks Nayanar may have been wrongly briefed. "Many who were in the forbidden category were released and Governor Sukhdev Singh kang, who is himself an eminent jurist, had approved it too," he says. Not everyone though looks at it that way.

But it is now becoming clear that the Government may have made a faux pas. According to official sources, the problem may have arisen because of the conflicting views expressed by successive JRCs. Apparently, in 1995, the then ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front had constituted a JRC, which had clearly recommended that a certain category of prisoners should not be brought under the purview of the amnesty. That recommendation, however, was ignored by the new committee that was set up by the LDF. Ministerial sources say though the first committee had submitted its report, the then government had not acted on it, thus reducing it to just another document gathering dust in a government department.

The LDF Government is now trying to wriggle out of the controversy and says it is ready to incorporate some of the recommendations of the earlier JRC. "We are looking into it and are hopeful of sorting everything out," says K. Mohanachandran, state home secretary. There is little else it can do now. Thanks to its inept handling of the issue, the Government messed up an opportunity that could have brought it tremendous political mileage.