45 years later, Prison Manual set for overhaul

Running into over 1,000 pages, the Maharashtra Prison Manual, 1979, was published and printed at the Yerawada Prison Press and was set into use for rules and procedures to be followed for prison administration.

“There were provisions including how there would be announcements at town squares and from village to village when a person was to be hanged till death. There were also procedures on how a hangman was to be chosen to carry out the act, his remuneration, the activities to be done on the day of the hanging. Now, the process is carried out within a prison by a staffer. There is no concept of a hangman. But, the provisions are still included in the manual. These will be done away with formally. Provisions including punishment for indiscipline by a prison inmate including chaining or whipping, are also being formally removed though they are not in practice anymore,” said a senior prison official.

A committee was formed with Additional Director General (Prisons) Amitabh Gupta, other prison officials, including Deputy Inspector General of Prisons, Yogesh Desai, and Vijay Raghavan, the project director of Prayas, a field action project of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, to formulate the new prison manual, suggesting the necessary changes to the old manual.

A proposed manual was submitted to the government which suggested a few changes. Gupta said that currently the recommended changes are submitted to the Ministry of Law and Judiciary and after approval, the new manual will be in place. Officials said that this month the Law and Judiciary department has resent the proposal to the prison department suggesting some changes.

The manual will also include guidelines by the Ministry of Home Affairs on various topics including rights of prisoners. In 2022, the MHA had also issued an advisory on treatment and care of transgender persons in prisons in lieu of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019.

The advisory included provisions for infrastructure in prisons for a separate enclosure for transgender inmates, respecting their self-identity, a registry to include a separate category, who can conduct searches as well as training and sensitisation of prison personnel on this. An official said that these have been included in the manual.

An official said that other changes include change in how a prison term is calculated, removal of restrictions on how furlough can be availed only after a certain period is spent in jail.

Also included are guidelines issued from time to time in the Model Prison Manual, National and State Human Rights Commissions, including on the diet and health care of prisoners, a separate chapter on legal aid. The recommendations also include the report submitted to the state government in 2018 by Justice Radhakrishnan Committee on Prison Reforms, followed by orders of the High Court.

According to records with the prison department, earlier the jail manual was prepared in 1955 by the erstwhile State of Bombay, dealing with administration of prison, its staff with definite guidelines on management of prisoners. After the manual was published and put into use, there was a movement for reorganisation of the state on the basis of language and other considerations, records state.

“The erstwhile Bombay State was expanded by adding some portions of Saurashtra, Marathwada and MP at the same time deleting some portions of Bombay State to Karnataka. The new state then was called bi-lingual Bombay State. The jails located in the merged area….were covered by the jail manuals framed by their respective parent states,” the current jail manual states.

In 1956, three jail manuals were in force and to bring uniformity, unification of the manuals was taken up in 1958. When the state was further bifurcated to form the State of Maharashtra in 1969, the work on the manual was begun again.

Subsequently, different prison rules published from 1962 till 1979, were formulated to publish the Maharashtra Prison Manual in 1979.