Mentally ill inmates prisoners of the system

IN 1993, a woman from Mumbai’s Arthur Road prison was presented before the sessions court. The judge was surprised. He had summoned a man. But she had the same name, so there had been a mix-up. So, she was sent back to prison.

But there was bewilderment all around. Who was she? Why was she there? Prayas, a field action project of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, which was working in the prison, looked into the case to check. Case papers were searched for. No record was available except one that said that some time ago, she had been sent from a Thane mental hospital with a certificate to say she was fit to stand trial.

The paper chase to the hospital, the police station and the prison found that she had been in the system for 14 years. She had been arrested for the infanticide of her girl child, brought in, in a 'mentally disturbed state', and ended up in the Thane mental hospital. That was all.

The sessions court that had asked for the male prisoner to be produced was approached. A peon was spared to help scour the decades-old court records. A yellowing chargesheet suggested an address. It was on a footpath outside a construction site where she and her husband had lived. Of course, no one was any longer there.

Prayas now filed a writ for her discharge in the Bombay High Court. Rather than do that, the court released her on personal bond on the condition that she be kept in a psychiatric care and rehabilitation home. Perhaps, that was the only compensatory kindness the system could offer for a 15-year lapse.

A few years later, came another summons to appear before the court and answer the accusation of infanticide. But the doctors at the rehabilitation home certified that she was still not fit to face trial. Prayas now again asked for her discharge and got it. For the law, that’s where the matter ended. No questions asked.

Ah, one thing I forgot to mention. Throughout all this, the young woman was silent. Some trauma in those years had turned her mute. She had once been diagnosed with epilepsy which had perhaps led to this condition. Unable to speak in her own defence, she wasn’t asked to. The system did not need her voice. It had no heart or ears to heed it. She was immaterial to a scheme designed for the convenience of those who run it.

This is not my story. It is the story told to me by Vijay Raghavan. He leads Prayas, which has been working with prisoners for the past 34 years. He says such cases are not unique; they come to light every now and then.

In another jail in another place, we met Baba. He had been tossed into jail for something. He was young then, schizophrenic and a danger to himself and to others. He wasn’t fit for trial, and he wasn’t fit to be let out on his own. The system wasn’t fit to find a solution. So, Baba stayed on, wandering about in the half-life of his mind and his ward. The police, the court and the jail staff moved on. No decisions were in train. When we met him, he was 19 years older, diabetic, festering wounds in his extremities and nearly blind. It took many people, many efforts and many months to find a sister who cared enough to get him back to his far away home in Kerala. Choking back her tears, she called to thank us again and again for finding her brother. I was too ashamed to agree to see them both in a town near my home. A couple of years later, Baba died quietly at peace in his home.

These tragedies are wrought by the system day in and day out. Those 75 per cent undertrials who make up the population of our overcrowded jails can tell you about it if you will but listen. Who knows what demons possessed Baba? Who knows if they could have been exorcised? Who knows what forlorn desperation forced Madam X to do what she did? Who knows whether she had really killed her child, or whether it was the street that had mercifully saved her the trouble?

In a kindlier system, could a frenzied, sorrowing human being have been salvaged? Given one small sliver of a chance, what could that young woman have made of her life? Who knows? Who cares?

These are old stories. But new ones continue. Sometimes, they reach the papers. A long time ago, newspaper readers may vaguely recall a slice with regret. But beyond that, there is nothing. The decades turn. More people are arrested today than ever before. More unsanitary, violent jails and madhouses (one cannot call them mental health institutions) are overcrowded in worse conditions than ever before.

The system does not permit space for caring to exist amongst the shorthanded, under-qualified supervisory and administrative staff. Legal aid comes and goes erratically and everywhere, walled institutions remain under-scrutinised by the great and the good. Good Samaritans must tread carefully lest they are turfed out for challenging the authorities. Duty holders like human rights commissions and boards of visitors are barely constituted anywhere; where they are, they are less than diligent. The courts continue. The ground remains unrepentant.

I don’t know where Madam X is now. Perhaps, living out her unrealised life in a rehabilitation home. Perhaps, she has drifted out of her locked-up life into a pauper’s grave to which no one will come. That’s alright. The wise will say that she is in a better place. They will be right. “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”