Bhubaneswar: The appeal by three Odia prisoners to get shifted from the jails in Tamil Nadu to the prisons in Odisha has been stuck in bureaucratic rigmarole for the last several years.
The Madras High Court, while hearing the plea of an applicant, Jatindra Kumar Behera who is currently serving life imprisonment in Puzhal Central jail in Chennai of TN, had directed the Tamil Nadu Prisons department to take appropriate steps for the transfer of the convict within a period of three months from the date of the delivery of the judgement November 31, 2019.
Behera, a resident of Harasinghpur in Jagatsinghpur district, in his affidavit presented before the Madras High Court mentioned that he was unable to attend the funeral ceremony of his father, Gurubari Behera, who died August 18, 2014.
Behera’s 78-year-old widowed mother could not visit Chennai to meet him due to her ill health and financial constraint.
Keeping in view the distance, his relatives are also not keen to keep in touch with him. There is no one in his house to inform him about the condition of his mother.
Consequently, a dejected Behera had sought the intervention of the court to direct the officials for his shifting to the Choudwar Circle Jail in Cuttack. He has reportedly sent his pleas to the Prisons department of TN requesting his shift to the Choudwar jail considering the poor financial condition of his family and the distance.
Subsequently, the TN Prisons department had sent a letter to the Directorate of Odisha Prisons and Correctional Services in 2018 seeking its help and permission for the reciprocal transfer of three convicts including Behera on humanitarian ground.
The Odisha Prisons department later sought some documents from its TN counterpart for consideration of the pleas presented by the three convicts, Satyanrayan Gunhar, Jatindra Behera and Ajay Kumar. The prisons department wrote a letter (11581 J/RT- 03/ 2018) to the Additional Director General of Police and Inspector General of prisons of Tamil Nadu in this regard 31 May, 2018.
However, the TN Prisons department is yet to submit the required documents despite several correspondences from Odisha for the past two years. The Odisha Prisons department has again written a letter to Tamil seeking all the required documents April 30, 2020.
In its letter, the Odisha Prisons department said, “Please send the requisite documents as called for vide this Directorate’s Letter dated 31.5.2018 and 10.12.2O18 to enable this office to consider the reciprocal transfer of 3 nos. of convicts including the petitioner.”
Speaking to Orissa POST, rights activist Biswapriya Kanungo said, “Transfer of a prisoner is a legal right. And it is also a human right. A convict in jail shall enjoy all his rights excluding free movement. So those from Odisha who are languishing in Madras jail are entitled for transfer to the home state as per Section 3 of The Transfer of Prisoners Act. Pending of their applications for transfer for so long amounts to violation of human rights.”
Meanwhile, Subhalaxmi Samanta, the lawyer of Behera, said that she would again move the court with contempt pleas against both the Odisha and Tamil Nadu Prisons departments soon as the three-month period set by the court has already been elapsed.
Gyan Ranjan Mohapatra, OP