State Human Rights Commission Chairperson Kshitij Vyas has taken suo motu notice of the poor living conditions of jail inmates after a set of random visits to prisons across Maharashtra.

In his complaint, drafted after the elaborate visits, Justice Vyas has asked the state to react on the “inhuman” conditions in which inmates are forced to live. Describing the prevailing conditions of Ahmednagar District Jail, Vyas said that 7-8 prisoners were made to live in a small room of 15 by 4 feet.

“It is difficult to even visualize how inmates survive in such small dingy rooms, without any proper ventilation. I was shocked to see how the prison authority treats their inmates,” Vyas said in the complaint.

Inmates are always last on state’s priority list, Vyas said in his appeal. “In festive seasons, most police personnel are diverted for security reasons, hence making it difficult to take prisoners to hospital when in need. State has to realise even prisoners are humans and cannot be treated like animals,” Vyas said.

Vyas in another suo-motu complaint mentioned that the state had stalled the basic vocational training that was imparted to inmates in Nashik and Paithan prisons. “It is the state’s responsibility to help the undertrials fend for their families when they are serving their sentence in jails. One of the reasons given by jail authority to stall vocational training was recession. No other state has been so ‘cruel’ to its inmates. Maharashtra is one of the progressed states and such reasons are not acceptable and cannot be ignored,” said Justice Vyas.

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