Mumbai: Seven months after the Supreme Court of India passed an order striking down the perpetuation of caste practices in Indian prisons, confusion over the implementation of one of its crucial directions persists. Among the nine significant directions aimed at abolishing caste practices in prisons across various states, the division bench of the Supreme Court – comprising then-Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra – on October 3 last year, directed the prison department to eliminate the caste columns maintained in prison registers.

This order was modified after the petitioner in the case, The Wire’s reporter Sukanya Shantha, approached the court, arguing that removing the caste column would also eliminate crucial social demographic data about those incarcerated. The Ministry of Home Affairs, however, failed to communicate the order for several months, leading most states to already discontinue mentioning caste in the registers. 

Finally, on the petitioner’s plea, on February 18, a notice was issued directly to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), seeking clarification on how the department plans to collate data. Although the NCRB has yet to file an affidavit, it sent a letter to Aishwarya Bhati, Additional Solicitor General of India, stating that the department merely aggregates figures provided by different states and that the deletion of caste columns from prison registers would directly impact the data collection process. 

The NCRB noted that once the prison department stops collecting this data, it would no longer be able to provide it to the NCRB. This letter was submitted to the court during the hearing on April 8.

The NCRB’s response aligns with the petitioner’s apprehension expressed while seeking modification in the original judgement. The order in the modification application was passed in November last year. 

In the application, presented and argued by senior counsel S. Muralidhar, lawyer Disha Wadekar, and Advocate-on-Record S. Prasanna, it was emphasised that deleting the column would significantly affect the data collection process. The lawyers argued that this data is vital for policymakers and researchers to understand the functioning of the criminal justice system in the country.

The petition addressing caste practices in Indian prisons stemmed from an investigative report published in The Wire in December 2020. The story initially prompted a suo motu order by the Jodhpur bench of the Rajasthan High Court, and subsequently, The Wire’s reporter moved the Supreme Court, seeking the elimination of similar caste-based rules in other states. Among the casteist practices identified were caste-based labour divisions, segregation of prisoners and prison officials based on caste, and discriminatory rules targeting Denotified Tribes.

On April 8, the Supreme Court directed the NCRB to file its affidavit in the matter within four weeks. Since the original petition was disposed of in October last year, the apex court has broadened the scope of the case to include other forms of discrimination, such as those based on gender, disability and more. 

The suo motu petition is now titled ‘In re: Discrimination inside prisons in India’. Sukanya Shantha is one of the intervenors in this petition, focusing on ensuring compliance with the original judgment.