MP Shobha Karandlaje approaches NHRC for check team to B’lore jail

Mangalore Today News Network

Udupi, July 19,2017: Reports inform that Udupi-Chikkamagaluru MP Shobha Karandlaje met Chairperson of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) H.L. Dattu in New Delhi on July 18, Tuesday and submitted a memorandum to him on what she said was “the inhuman treatment meted out to prisoners in the Bengaluru Central Jail at Parappana Agrahara violating their human rights.”

In the memorandum submitted to NHRC Chair Dattu, copies of which were released to the press here, MP Karandlaje said that the prisoners lodged in the Central Jail and other prisons also had human rights. While corrupt jail officials provide all kinds of facilities to those who pay well.

A few days ago, 32 prisoners were beaten and some had suffered injuries on their back, stomach, hands and faces.

In that condition, they were shifted from Bengaluru to other prisons in Mysuru, Ballari, Belagavi and Davanagere in an overnight travel, she said. This led to prisoners staging a dharna inside the jail as they were not allowed to speak to D. Roopa, the then DIG, Prisons, who had visited the jail. In her two reports submitted to the State government, DIG Roopa had brought out certain irregularities inside the jail, including special treatment to some prisoners.

Though the 32 prisoners had been shifted to other jails, their family members were not able to meet them. Jails were meant to reform wrongdoers so that they could become law abiding citizens.

But inhuman treatment of prisoners would make them hardened criminals, she said.  The NHRC should take cognisance of violation of human rights of prisoners in the Bengaluru jail and dispatch a team to study the issue to protect the human rights of the prisoners.