Aastha Thakur
Published on August 9, 2022 at 16:32 IST
The Allahabad High Court last week ruled, “a convicted person also has the right to pursue his study and appear in examination from the Jail to enter into the mainstream of social life.”
The Court was presided by a single-judge bench of Justice Neeraj Tiwari, who was hearing the application filed by rusticated law student of the Aligarh Muslim University seeking allowance to complete his course. Accordingly, the Allahabad HC directed the university to allow the petitioner to sit for his law exam as not doing so could potentially harm his career.
In September 2021, the Supreme Court declared convicting accused via sentencing them was not noble way of delivering justice. In a similar vein, the Allahabad High Court in this case observed that “punishment given to any person should have been reformative and not prejudicial.”
It is not to avoid that the serving harsher punishments have often not succeeded in stopping or reducing crime. Even when they are meant to serve as examples, as in the case of capital punishment for rapes and other rarest of rare crimes, they have largely failed as a deterrent to future crime.
The present case is filed where the petitioner was not convicted under any law – that even if he had a choice to complete studies. The court added that, “the petitioner is a young student, and he must have been given a chance to correct himself and choose the right path of life, if deviated, and denial would frustrate the aim of reformative punishment.”
Like any other citizens, a prisoner has right to liberty under Articles 19 and 21, it wasn’t static. As the Allahabad High Court noted in the above case that the singular focus on punishment would only instill fear among prisoners without actually encouraging them to reform their behaviors.
According to a US-based report from January 2016 on correctional education programs in American prisons, those who enrolled in any such program were 43 percent less likely to return to prisons. Thus, ensuring that prisoners have access to education is essential to justice embodying a reformative character.
Earlier this year, Dasvi, a Netflix film starring Abhishek Bachchan in the lead, focussed on the story of a convicted politician embarking on a journey to finish his high school education. Soon after, reports emerged that nine prisoners in Agra Central Jail inspired by the film gave their board exams. The Allahabad High Court’s remarks, if followed in spirit, can then go a long way in transforming the idea of justice in the country.