Black Warrant, Tihar Jail, and a Long-Lost Memory
Long back I heard Sanjukta Parashar at a conference.
For those who don’t know, Sanjukta is an Assam cadre IPS, who has been at the forefront of many encounters, and earned the moniker of “Iron Lady of Assam”.
Something Sanjukta said stayed with me. She said that the police are like the scavengers of society. When things go wrong, violence breaks out, blood spills, the carnal or animal instincts come out, it is the police who make the clean up and make all look good again.
I remembered this while watching Black Warrant on Netflix. Sunil Gupta, the Assistant Superintendent of Prisons (ASP) at Tihar jail (Sunil is also the author of the book of the same name, on which the series is based), blurts out while interacting with his brother's potential in-laws: “I work in the jail, a place where all the dirt of society is put and covered.”
Prisons (or Jails, we use these terms interchangeably but they mean different — jails are for short-term confinement, mostly undertrials, and prisons are for long-term, mostly ones convicted) are an enigma in India. For most, anyone in jail is a criminal and has to be rejected as even a human being. Reality is very different.
India has a prison capacity of around 450K, while the actual number is around 600K. This is an overpopulation of 33%, but media reports suggest it is far worse. But whatever the reality, the good news is India still has a very small prison population (the US has over 2 million in incarceration, and in some groups like young black men it is almost 1 in 4 are behind bars). But the bad news is around 75% of the Indian prisoners are undertrials, and among the undertrials, 75% are either poor or underprivileged sections or both.
So what does it say? Does India have less crime? Or do the rich in India not go to jail? I would like to believe the second. This is also the message in Black Warrant. Have a look at it.
The series is excellent, but that is an almost universal verdict. But watching it brought back me a project visit to the old Bangalore jail in 1995, as part of our postgraduate program.
Before it was made into the Freedom Park Museum (https://shop.museumsofindia.org/node/578), the old Bangalore Central Jail was the largest in the city. Built-in 1867, this was the mainstay of the city before the Bangalore Central Jail came up in 2000. And in 1995 we visited the jail.
There are four main reasons for going to jail — as an inmate, as a visitor, as an official, and as someone who is making a study on it. And there are very few people who fall into these four buckets, and a first-hand experience of a running jail is an exception. And I am lucky on that count.
We had a course taught by legendary Mira Bakhru where we had to make a study of a social organization of significance. We had a classmate whose father was the Police Commissioner of the city (T Srinivasulu, who later went on to become the DGP), and through him, we planned to do it in the Old Bangalore Jail). And it was an experience.
As I mentioned it was 1995, five years away from starting the current Central Jail. By that time, the Old Jail was already ramping down and was used more as a low-security prison. So the inmates were moved from other jails based on their behavior over the years and assumed low risk.
Old Bengaluru Central Jail was managed by the inmates, including the internal security. Jail management was responsible for the perimeter security, apart from the overall management. The entire experience was an eye-opener, but the most interesting were the inmates.
We met many of them, including some who had committed murder(s). None were on death row (the jail did not have the hanging), but there were quite a few who were on life imprisonment (14 years, not entire life — which can be if courts specifically state that).
I still remember one of these life convicts, a lanky, bearded young man. He was already in his 8th year, and expecting that he would get a partial remission. I asked him — what brought him there.
He said he killed a man who used to harass women in his village. Complaints did no good, so one day he decided to take things into his own hands. He took a sickle, accosted and pinned the man down, and slit his throat. Surrendered, went to trial, and got a prison sentence.
Did you regret it? No. Would he have done it again if there had been the same circumstances? Yes to that too.
He was doing his PhD and was to complete it soon. And hoping to go out and have a new life with his education.
Did his dream come true? It is now 30 years, so surely he will be an old man — if things have gone as planned. I am not sure whether society gave him a chance to rediscover himself.
Jails by definition are correctional. Except for one who has Black Warrants written with a pen whose nib is broken, or others who spend their entire life behind bars (either because of a lifetime sentence or death), all do come out. And they should get a choice to get a normal life. But given the inherent biases we have, that hardly ever happens.
In Black Warrant there is Garvit Duggal, who is a B Com from SRCC and a murder convict. What happens to him? The series gives a hint of hope. A brief search of the net says Duggal’s character is based on someone who survived Tihar, came out, and became a successful businessperson.
That is heartening. I wish that something similar happened to the young, bearded “murderer” I met at the Old Bangalore Central Jail.
That he got his life back in a real “Freedom Park”.
