A New Delhi death sentence

A New Delhi death sentence

Posted by Peter Foster on 13 Jun 2007 at 13:00
Tags: New Delhi, Capital punishment, Prison, Heat stroke, Tihar

Astonishing story on the front page of today's Times of India which reports that six inmates of New Delhi's infamously brutal and over-crowded Tihar jail have died from heatstroke over the past week.

I've never been inside Tihar but a friend who has tells me that it's a hell-hole, built for 800 or so inmates but now hosting more than triple that figure in conditions that you could be jailed for keeping animals under in Europe.

This last week in Delhi has been insufferably hot with temperatures touching an inhuman 48C/118F - although I should say we've had some respite today with temperatures dipping to a breezy 40C/104F.

It's fruitless and unfair making direct comparisons between India and the developed world, but surely six dead inmates in six days is too many, even in India where life, like it or not, is cheap? And with 12 more inmates in hospital with heatstroke, there's a fair chance the death toll will rise.

Revealingly, the prison authorities, when challenged, defended the deaths by saying there was nothing untoward about them - no violence or brutality - but all were "natural" and "caused due to the intense heat conditions".

So that's all right then. Tihar was supposed to have been 'transformed' by Kiran Bedi, India's woman super-cop who went on to work for the UN department of peacekeeping operations, but from these figures it looks like there's still plenty of work to do.

The combination of poor ventilation and frequent power-cuts that stop the fans in the low-roofed barracks, temperatures rise to the point beyond which human beings aren't designed to survive, particularly if they are already weak and sick.

To be fair the authorities have acted, if a little too late, by offering the inmates unlimited 'lemon water', wet sheets and some ice cubes in the hope of keeping a few more of them alive.

Last year, the Times reports, 23 prisoners died in Tihar, a slight improvement on the 27 who died in 2005. But already this year 18 inmates have died which means the jail is heading for an unenviable record if this summer keeps up.

India is among the dwindling countries of the world that retains the death penalty, although it uses it very sparingly indeed.

And yet for an average of 25 inmates per year, being sent to serve time in the 'Black Hole of Tihar' has amounted to the same thing - a death sentence carried out by one of India's chief executioners - criminal neglect.
Posted by Peter Foster on 13 Jun 2007 at 13:00