Presumed guilty...My impressions of Tihar @ Sonali Gupta , March 2000

The maxim continually resounds in the corridors of justice day in and day out "Innocent until proven guilty", but isn't it the other way round in the Indian context, "Guilty till proven innocent", and as the pendulum ticks away, time flies.....

A world within our own world is what they call Tihar, in the days of yore it used to be a sleepy village, little did this sleepy village know what had the British in store for them...a famous name for the largest prison in the whole of South Asia, Tihar.

As a child the massive walls of the prison forever intrigued me. What lay beyond it, who were the people enclosed by these massive walls, what fate had they in store.

My tryst with Tihar started when I was in my second year of Law. An announcement that the faculty wanted students of law to go to Tihar and help criminals charged with petty offences. These prisoners were marooned in prison due to their inability to pay surety bonds and most of them were first time offenders. Thus, we as students were to act as god sent messiahs to secure the release of the lesser-privileged lot.

The high imposing walls of Tihar, where even a gecko would find it tough to scale, seemed to be as ironical as it may sound, "The gates of judgement."
Circuiting around the high walls in the narrow lanes approaching the 8 jails, one felt out of place, in a territory forbidden for all those who dare. Relatives lined up to meet their near and dear, the queue akin to the ones seen in communist Russia.

The terrible heat, the high walls, the jail bars, the elevated machaans for security with their blaring speakers seemed so alien, it was depressing, that's all I was aware of.

We were to move to Jail No.1, my heart was beating fast, this would be a face off session, never in my life had I ventured into forbidden territory.

What lay in store for me? Would my image be shattered or would it be reinforced? These were some of the questions that I was carrying in my mind.

The sentry at the dull Iron Gate made us put in our signatures and stamped us with blue ink on our right arms warning us of the consequences if it were to be wiped off.

Amazingly the Tamilnadu Police guards the inner walls, the language barrier restrains the undertrials and convicts from forming a bond with the sentries. A black board had all the statistics clearly stating the presence of the number of convicts and undertrials lodged in the jail in April 2000, the month we visited.

The second entry was another Iron Gate with a wicker door and here we met the very famous Suhaib Ilyaasi, the anchor of a very famous show called "India's Most Wanted", on the lines of "America's Most Wanted" and a good copy of the latter. It was ironical to see a person, who helped catching dreaded criminals, now being tried for the supposed murder of his wife. Here he was holding a water cooler in his hand and a fan in an attempt to make his stay at Tihar more comfortable. Clad in a pathani suit, he still smiled radiantly but yes there was a visible regret in his expression, the silence said it all, he never wanted to be seen in this state in front of his fans....

We entered the forbidden domain with our hearts beating fast, My first view, and I saw a man clad in white- a convict. In jails, convicts are to wear white clothes- was it to segregate them from the rest or was it to instil in them the purity of the purest of all -white, and not carry that blot which brought them in.

A caged structure stood before me, which seemed to be very much similar to an aviary cage found in a zoo. I asked the convict whose duty was to keep an attendance record of the undertrials / convicts by a mandatory head count, the ones who arrived late from the Courts were to wait at the aviary cage for the next head count of the day. It seemed to be rather frustrating being there.

The inner walls of the jail had a dull yellow slip, which did not yield psychedelic results but boredom most certainly. These walls were adorned with Golden words like, "Do one good act a day," these reminded me of school days which they say are our formative years, did these captioned words really have that effect which they sought to achieve. Aren't we to blame for the inefficacy of these words, does our so called democratic and welfare state provide children with compulsory education?
Education is fast becoming a figment of imagination and is just left as a directive enshrined in the Directive Principles of state policy in Part IV of the Constitution of India. Then can we blame these people who have been misled from the paths of righteousness to follow something that they were never even aware of....

The Jail Superintendent for Jail No.1 directed us to the only woman cell of Tihar then, since then a new barrack exclusively for the female lot has been inaugurated this year. Here too, the first entrance greeted us with a smile of a lady dressed in a khaki sari, checking our names et al. The beautiful bougainvillaea creeper with its pink flowers entwined itself on to the outerwalls of the female cells in an effort to make the surroundings more feminine and it did appear so.

My first impression of the female jail, well, it wasn't even near to the image I carried, it seemed to be a far better version. I could see a large elevated platform where many old women presumably of the lower economic class were squatting. I was told that most of them were undertrials in Dowry Death Cases. Just recently I had read a book on criminology wherein the author talked extensively on Lombroso's theory of human anatomy as a factor leading to a person becoming a potential criminoloid. Now, this moment I too felt myself scanning the physical characteristics of all the convicts and undertrials there. I did spot some while talking to them, shifty and slimy eyes, broad foreheads, short statured and criminal. I felt guilty after a while, was I being prejudiced and getting swayed by Lombroso's pathetic theory in assessing these people and bringing in biases? I stopped myself. We were given forms to fill. Thereafter, we asked everyone to form groups of 10 each and these groups were then allotted individual students, all females.
The first one in my group was a lady charged with theft, she had been languishing in jail since the past 2 years and had also been let out on probation in between. I asked her about her history and the charges brought forth and filled up her bond.

The exercise of interviewing these people was just not for filling up bonds but also talking to these children of the lesser gods...
While talking to those accused of Dowry deaths, amazingly majority of them denied their involvement in the gruesome act, they all pleaded innocent.

I can still feel the head of one of the undertrials on my shoulder who cried, it did arouse sympathy in me, but only god and she knew the truth, not I.
One of them a frail old lady dressed in a beige coloured salwar kameez came upto me with a document in her hand, her only identity. She too was an undertrial charged under Section 304-B of the Indian Penal Code. She was of about 68 years of age.Approaching me as if I was the milk of human kindness, she just wanted to be heard. As she started to narrate her sob story, tears came rolling down her cheeks. I did not even have a handkerchief to wipe her tears.
It was a rather hot and sultry day, the platform where we were all seated under the shade of the Banyan tree was burning hot, on noticing my discomfort, she took off her torn dupatta and placed it under me. I was touched by her gesture, was she really a criminal, could she really burn her daughter-in -law with utmost cruelty or was she just one of the scapegoats of society. I was in a turmoil, my brain was filled with contradictions... sensitivity, anger, helplessness, justice so many issues revolved in my head but with no clarity whatsoever...

I noticed several children gallivanting around with gay abandon. There is a provision under the jail manual, which allows the children of convicts to stay while they are serving their jail sentence provided they are under the age of 5. They too are trapped for no fault of theirs. Looking at their innocent faces, I wondered, did they deserve being trapped like this, how were they to cope once they reached the age of 5, would memories of the motherly affection that was bestowed on to them remind them of love or would it remind them of hatred, hatred of a jail called Tihar. Once out of the environs of the jail, would they be ridiculed and snubbed. These were the very easy questions, which came up but had difficult answers, cause only time would tell.

The women's cell lodged even the unscrupulous elements of society under the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act, 1956, they were supposedly perturbed by our presence and were trying to convince the rest to wean themselves away from us. With luscious lips and powdered faces, they were the most conspicuous elements around and seemingly most comfortable too.

Just recently there had been major headlines in the news about a father and daughter duo engaged in drug smuggling, what was appalling was that the gentleman was from the higher echelons of the prestigious Indian Airforce. This indeed is the true picture of what really goes on up there in one of the many ladders to the top, Well, why I mentioned this was because I chanced upon the retired Airforce Orderly's daughter, a plumpish girl about 30 years of age standing near the rest rooms waiting for her turn for ablutions. She would be lodged in the jail as an undertrial for drug trafficking-for a long time I suppose, because litigation in India is a never-ending story. The last I heard about the case was that the framing of charges was complete and the trial was to commence in September 2000. I have also heard that the laws under the NDPS Act (Narcotics, drugs and psychotropic substances) are very stringent, the possession of a mere 100 Grams of Narcotics, if proved in the Court of Law can invite a jail sentence of a minimum of 10 years. This also accounts for a significant presence of female prisoners of foreign origin languishing in jail for drug pedalling et al.

The foreign prisoners could be well spotted. Their attitude showed that they felt that they were invincible and better than the plebeians around. I noticed the Indians staring askance at them in awe. In India whiteness has always alluded us all, why? Well our history bears testimony to all the conquering Portuguese, French and finally the English, who instilled in our minds that fair colour was most certainly superior to the darker tones which represented the parched earth. And sadly, it is still true...atleast in small towns.

One of the inmates presumably a French detested being interviewed by us, eventually she learnt that one of us was a Christian and asked others of her kind to be interviewed, Where kindness did not work at least religion did!

In Tihar there seems to be a visible hierarchy amongst the inmates, the downtrodden lot are not treated properly by the more elitist kinds, though the jail takes care that such a situation may not arise but then at times unruly incidents cant be ruled out, after all frustrations have to be vented out somehow, somewhere....


The smell of phenyl pervaded the air, that's when I realised that the women's cell even houses a small clinic, its true for every hospital that the moment one steps in even a healthy person starts feeling ill, surprisingly I found many inmates flocking around there and faking their illness. Was it their desire to be pampered and loved for a little while, it wasn't that easy coping within four corners of a wall.

Just across the elevated platform was another enclosed wall, I was told that it is here that the inmates undertake meditation classes. Kiran Bedi the famous I.P.S officer who often makes newspaper headlines was literally dumped to Tihar as I.G Prisons. This posting was often treated as a punishment posting, however she took it in her own stride and made up her mind to change the hell that was Tihar.

It was in her time that the prison underwent major reforms and transformed the prison from a mere jail to a reformative and a rehabilitative jail thus utilising the idle man power, after all she knew well that "an idle mind is a devils workshop". In her autobiography, "I dare", the change as witnessed by inmates while serving their

sentence before Kiran Bedi joined as IG prisons can be easily seen from a hell to a better place that is now Tihar. She also started Vipassana meditation classes, this exercise does help significantly in introspection which is required of, if the inmate has to be transformed in to a better human being rather than making him into another hard core criminal moving back easily in to society with no regrets whatsoever.

The famous case of Bachchan Singh Vs State of Punjab, wherein the convict after undergoing his prison sentence was released but thereafter he committed the gruesome act of killing by hacking his cousin and two other family members. This incident explicitly stated the inefficacy of a jail sentence for a similar crime committed earlier, meaning thereby lack of a reformative approach.

Earlier, being sentenced to Tihar never seemed to be too much of a problem for regulars, infact Tihar served as a safe haven for them to carry out their operations clandestinely without the fear of being caught. Famous gangs like "Tyagi", which still strike terror in the minds of those who were well aware of their activities, was formed in the very same Tihar Jail. It so happened that hard core criminals could easily lay hands on first time offenders and when these new criminals would be ushered out of the Jail they would carry out the operations on the instructions given to them by these hard core criminals. Thus, being sentenced to Jail was never a problem. However, Kiran Bedi keeping this in mind decided to segregate hard core criminals from the first time offenders so as to cut off lines of communication. This hampered the recruitment process and invited wrath from these very elements, but what had been started couldn't possibly be stopped and so things started to change for the better, the figures in the crime chart of the capital also witnessed a visible decline.

Coming back to the women's cell, it was now afternoon, the sun was overhead and we all were still busy with our interactive session with the inmates.

The warden hollered out for us, it was lunchtime. We entered the warden's office, which was decorated with trophies and photographs of functions, which had taken place in Tihar and were supposedly some of the joyous moments for the inmates.

We were told that the inmates especially in view of our arrival had prepared the food. The salad looked fresh as if it had just been brought from the farm, the chappati's were soft and the lentils and vegetables too were good. In short I could feel the motherly warmth in the food served. I sat there wondering as to which of those hands had poured in that love and affection in the food just like my mother does....

After Lunch, we started off with the exercise again, many of the inmates went into their cells probably to enjoy their afternoon siesta. A few old women lingered on, they bought with them their tattered identity cards. Some were oblivious of the crime they were charged with. I explained to a young woman charged with the murder of her own husband that she could ask the court for a lawyer on the ground of being indigent.

For the undertrials, the only excursion outside the precincts of Jail was when they were to appear in Court. Luckily for them the trial courts are situated in the other corner of Delhi thus traversing the metropolitan in the caged Tihar buses, with prying eyes from the other side of the bars wanting to know how criminals look like. The undertrials in turn would be looking outside with tears and silent agony and may be realising the value of freedom for they were now chained, for how long, the law itself was not aware of that.

A lady was patiently awaiting her turn to have the interview, but she could wait no more, with a spitfire tongue she blurted out with all the anguish and frustration which she had gathered over the years being housed as an undertrial. I tried to experiment and countered her high hysterical tone with my calm reaction, and reasoned that how could I possibly permit her to jump the queue when there are already 3 women in line. However, it seemed to me that she had already stopped being the disciplined one, because she for one believed that she was in the jail for all the wrong reasons. At times I wonder, what about people like her who infact are falsely implicated and land up in jail for no fault of theirs, how would they cope? Would their belief in God diminish? Would they stop being law-abiding citizens? Are we in the process of making the jail, a breeding ground of contempt towards the authorities and the machinery, for which these people, "once upon a time", had respect?

The lady cried and wiped off her tears with her sari, she apologised for her resentful behavior and said she trusted no one any more. This lady was a living example and an answer to all the questions I had just asked myself.
It was nearing Tea-time, we were all called to have tea. We had it in small glasses with Coconut biscuits. The aroma of tea was captivating, it soothed my tense nerves and I felt much at ease. After having Tea, I along with a junior warden took a quick walk in order to see the place from closer quarters. In Jail terminology, cells were housed in different Barracks, they hardly appeared to be akin to the barracks of the armies I had often seen. The inside of these barracks were damp and dingy, due to shortage of space, the cells were housing inmates more than they could hold, hence the crowd.

The smell of phenyl was still in the air, some women lay there in agony, and their pain however was not visible to the naked eye. Their pain I reckoned was beyond the material, it was ethereal.

It was almost time to bid goodbye, the Jail warden asked us to wind up. The old lady in the beige suit I had referred to earlier came upto me with tears in her eyes and said, " My child, would you come to the Courts the day I have to appear ", I looked at her, what could I say? I said, I would try. The date incidentally coincided with the day I was born, that's the way life is, for some it's a new birth, for some its a death warrant.

We ushered ourselves out from the female cells and found ourselves in a vast courtyard, from where we had initially entered. The same captioned messages were in view again but this time the anxiety had lessened.
The same aviary kind of cage came my way, the same Iron door with the Tamilian sentry and his gun. The board which notified the statistics of the inmates showed a progressive approach on my way out, thanks to the ongoing strike by the Lawyers all over the country.

The last entrance of the Jail was where our blue ink marks were checked, we were all asked to sign again and then only did we approach the world outside.
My feelings at this stage were devoid of any ideas or thoughts. I was numb, mentally drained. I just wanted to reach home and relax, not think at all for once. While leaving I tried to cast my eyes to have a last glance of the famed Tihar Jail I just came to know from such close quarters. On my way back, all I could see were the fast moving vehicles, the cold city, smoke. I was very tired, it seemed as if I have walked a thousand miles only to reach nowhere. I felt those eyes following me outside, tears, cries, voices all called out for me.... For they still lived in my memories though a world apart. What I did learn was that the field of law I had decided to pursue, emotions were something which were not be dealt with, neutrality was the key to success and this indeed was a hard fact to digest.