Mukesh Ranjan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 7
With Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab topping the list of states where jail inmates have committed suicide, the government recently said in total 102 prisoners took the extreme step of ending their lives in three years (2014-16).
According to the combined national figures of prisoners committing suicides in Indian jails by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for three years, which has been presented to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), besides Uttar Pradesh, which is the largest state in the country having 20 such deaths in 2016, Haryana stood second with nine such casualties, followed by Punjab and Rajasthan with eight each.
Haryana had witnessed doubling of such deaths from four in 2014 to nine in 2016, whereas in case of Punjab it declined from 10 in 2014 to eight in 2016.
Noting that the NCRB report on suicides in prisons by inmates “do not indicate any trend” for such incidents, a senior MHA official said, “As prison management is the responsibility of state governments as per entry 4 of List-II of Seventh schedule of the Constitution, the Centre has time-to-time circulated a Model Prison Manual- 2016 to all states and Union Territories (UTs).”
He also said the manual “has chapters on medical care and welfare of prisoners focusing on health, counselling, mental well-being, psychotherapy, cognitive behaviour etc of prison inmates”.
Quoting from a number of advisories sent to the states and UTs on psychological health and other needs of prisoners, the official said they have been asked “to make all efforts to reduce and possibly eliminate their unnatural deaths in prisons”.
It is, however, heartening to note that there are eight out of 29 states, where not a single case of such death was reported between 2014 and 2016. Among them the prominent states are Naxal-affected Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand and most of the Himalayan states, including Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/2Jl6szz
via Today’s News Headlines
No comments: