‘Prisoners should serve time in own state’
The Bombay high court on Monday ruled that the accused, in cases transferred by the Supreme Court to Maharashtra, should be sent to jails in their respective states after they are convicted.
A division bench of Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and S.B. Shukre was hearing a petition filed by Ramesh Chandana, who was convicted along with 11 others in the gangrape case of Bilkis Bano and the murders of her family members during the 2002 Gujarat riots. After his conviction, Chandana was serving time in a jail in Maharashtra and had urged that he may be sent to a prison in Gujarat.
The bench ordered the transfer of Chandana to a jail in Gujarat and asked the authorities to follow this order in future, too. Accordingly, 11 others convicted in the same case would now be transferred to Gujarat jails. The court observed that in such cases, the convicts cannot be treated as convicts of Maharashtra, but of the state from where the case has been transferred.
The bench observed, “Once the accused in such cases are convicted, why should they be kept in jails in the state? They should be sent to prisons in their respective states.”
Chandana was convicted by a sessions court in Mumbai in 2008 after the Supreme Court transferred the case for retrial in Maharashtra. Since then he was lodged in Nashik jail. His petition sought a transfer from Nashik jail to Vadodara central prison on the grounds that he was a convict of the Gujarat government and not of Maharashtra. In 2010, he had filed a petition seeking the same relief and the high court had asked the state to consider his case.
The inspector general of prisons (IGP), however, had rejected his plea. Chandana again moved the high court in December in 2012 when the IGP’s order was quashed and the state was asked to reconsider his plea. However, his application was once again rejected by the state on the grounds that his appeal was pending.
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