SC sets aside jail manual rules promoting caste-based discrimination in jails

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday said that it would not tolerate caste discrimination in jails over allocating menial jobs to inmates belonging to oppressed communities, Scroll reported citing Bar and Bench.

It is reported that a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra struck down prison manual rules for promoting this discrimination in jails.

The court was responding to a petition filed by journalist Sukanya Shantha highlighting that prison manuals in several states encourage caste based discrimination.

Sukanya Shantha ran investigative reporting series in The Wire on the subject bringing to fore that the division of labour in jails were based on the “‘purity-impurity’ scale.

Sukanya Shantha’s reporting revealed that higher castes were engaged in works deemed ‘pure’ while those of the lower castes had to carry out ‘impure jobs’.

The court ordered that prisoners belonging to the oppressed communities should not be given menial and degrading works due to their caste identity.

“We have held that assigning cleaning and sweeping to marginalised and assigning cooking to higher caste is nothing but a violation of Article 15,” the bench was quoted as saying.

Article 15 of the Constitution bans all discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex or the place of birth, according to the report.

The court made it clear that ‘such indirect use of phrases’ targeting ‘lower castes cannot be used within our constitutional framework, even if caste is not explicitly mentioned’.

The court directed all states to make changes according to the judgment adding that provision promoting caste discrimination are ‘held to be unconstitutional’.

Highlighting the importance of protecting the prisoners’ dignity, the court pointed out that failing to do so reflects colonial legacy of dehumanization.