The Sanganer open prison in Jaipur, set up in 1963 as a tool for the rehabilitation of convicted prisoners, has inspired the open prison movement in India in recent years.
Named after the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and former governor of Rajasthan, Dr Sampurnanand, the Shri Sampurnanand Khula Bandi Shivir is located approximately 25 km from Jaipur and spread over four hectares with a low boundary wall. It houses about 450 prisoners.
The camp was started as an experiment in a reformatory system of punishment with 11 inmates and has since grown to include several amenities for the prisoners transferred here and their families.
On July 30, the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) allotted the land occupied by the Sanganer open prison on a 99-year lease to the director (public health), Medical and Health Services, Rajasthan, for expanding a satellite hospital.
Consequently, this move was a result of the July 22 meeting, where the members of the JDA’s land and property disposal committee decided to allocate the land currently occupied by the open prison camp for hospital construction and make a recommendation to the state government to facilitate it.
The prisoners and their families face an uncertain future
The JDA, while specifying the terms of the allotment, has held that the medical department will coordinate with the jail authority, and do the work of “removing the houses” built by the prisoners. This “eviction” order has led to a huge uncertainty about the lives and livelihood of the prisoners and their families residing there for several years.
The convicts here have built their own houses and they pay for the use of water and electricity. They are allowed to go out to work between 6 am and 7 pm within a 10-km radius. Their children attend a primary school within the complex and nearby schools too. Prisoners here are daily wage earners and labourers. Some of them teach in neighbouring schools.
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The camp has a strict screening system. Those who have committed heinous offenses, crimes against the state, drug smuggling, and habitual offenders are not selected for transfer to the camp. All the inmates are required to have served at least a third of their sentences, including remission, in a closed jail before being eligible for transfer to this camp.
A screening committee is tasked with the job of ascertaining the mental and physical fitness, behavioural conduct, reformatory potential, etc., of inmates who have completed the minimum mandatorily prescribed period of incarceration.
Prisoners here live with their families, serve their sentences with minimal supervision, and are not locked up in prison cells. They are allowed to go out for employment during the day and earn a living. Their return to their “homes” in the evening is duly checked and marked by the camp administration.
Notably, the Sanganer open prison, one of the oldest open air prisons in the country, serves as a vital facility for the rehabilitation and reintegration of inmates into society, consistent with the principles enshrined under Articles 14, 19, 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India.
It provides a structured environment aimed at reforming offenders and preparing them for productive citizenship upon release. It has been observed that prisoners do not reoffend once they come to stay in Sanganer open prison.
In January 2023, three sitting Supreme Court judges, Justices S.K. Kaul, Ravindra Bhat, and Aniruddha Bose, besides the former Judge, Justice Madan B. Lokur, visited the Sanganer open prison, and expressed their appreciation of the ongoing experiment there.
The Supreme Court has time and again emphasised that the Rajasthan model of open prison system can be a solution to overcrowding of prisons, and it can also address the issue of rehabilitation of prisoners.
Open prisons in India
The Sanganer open prison is one of the 52 open prisons in Rajasthan, the state has the highest number of open prisons in the country. According to the data compiled by the Prison Aid + Action Research (parr) in 2022, and which has been partly updated recently, the number of open prisons in the country is approximately 102.
Maharashtra, having 19 open prisons, comes second in the state-wise break-up, with Madhya Pradesh (seven), Gujarat (four) and West Bengal (four) coming third and fourth in the list. Tamil Nadu and Kerala have three open prisons each.
Will the Sanganer open prison success story pause?
The open prison success story in Rajasthan, however, is poised to face uncertainty for reasons other than the prisoners’ conduct, if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state government has its way.
The primary school, the anganwadi, etc., built in the Sanganer camp to cater to the needs of the prisoners and their families are also likely to be axed if the eviction recommendation of the JDA is approved by the Bhajan Lal Sharm-led government.
To be precise, the JDA has allotted 2.2 hectares of land out of the 3.04 hectares of the Sanganer open prison, to the medical and health department for expanding the satellite hospital.
The land available to the open prison has been reduced from 3.04 hectares to 0.84 hectares, which amounts to snatching away more than two-thirds of its lands.
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According to the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL), this would take away not only most of the houses which the inmates have built for themselves, but also the school, the anganwadi, the quarters, the office, the hall and other physical resources which now exist there.
The JDA, in a letter to the director general (prisons), government of Rajasthan, pointed out on March 6 that it had possession of the land (Khasra No.58 and 61 of the village Sanganer), which is occupied by the Sanganer open prison.
The JDA noted that on the Khasra No.58 land, there are temporary constructions by prisoners, and they should be immediately removed by the direction of the jail superintendent and after that, it needs to be informed to the authorised officer of (public health) Medical and Health Services, so that the land can be captured by the director (public health) Medical and Health Services, Rajasthan. The JDA added that the “honourable chief minister is supposed to lay the foundation stone of the hospital.”
The construction work on the plot will be started within a period of six months from the date of the allotment letter and will be completed within a period of two years, according to the terms of the allotment. The plot will be used only for the construction of a commercial and institutional building (reserved for medical facilities), according to the JDA.
The JDA’s decision comes in the wake of the move to upgrade the satellite hospital in Sanganer to a 300-bed district hospital (from the current 50-bed hospital) due to the lack of district hospitals in Jaipur and the absence of medical facilities in the Sanganer region.
The justification for the decision appears to be that the allocated land for the purpose of expansion of the hospital is in addition to the open prison land, and therefore, there will be no violation of any directives from the Supreme Court.
The JDA’s decision to evict the inmates of a well-known open prison camp in the country has shocked those associated with the open prison movement in the country.
Smita Chakraburtty, founder of Prison Aid + Action Research (paar), a non-partisan research and advocacy organisation focussed on prison reforms and open prison advocacy says:
“If the houses are demolished as directed by the JDA, the prison department will send the prisoners in the open prison at Sanganer to other open prisons, far away from Jaipur. Here they have their livelihoods. They have created their own employment, borrowed money to buy autos, set up tea stalls, eateries etc. All of these will be lost. The prisoners will suffer a massive blow.”
The Supreme Court’s stand
The JDA’s decision contradicts a recent Supreme Court order in Suhas Chakma vs. Union of India, handed down by Justices B.R. Gavai and Sandeep Mehta on May 17.
In paragraph nine of this order, the bench noted that there is a proposal to reduce the area at Sanganer open air camp in Jaipur. The bench directed that there shall be no attempt at reduction in the area of open air camps/institutions/prisons, wherever they are functioning.
The bench noted with concern in this case that open correctional institutions, shown to be functioning in different names, are not being utilised to their optimum capacity.
The amicus curiae, K. Parameshwar, told the bench that strengthening the open correctional institutions, apart from addressing the present issue of overcrowding of prisons, would also help in the rehabilitation of prisoners and do away with caste discrimination faced by them.
The bench, in this case, has requested Parameshwar and Rashmi Nandakumar, counsel appearing for the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), to jointly prepare and circulate a questionnaire to obtain information from all the states in respect of the status and functioning of the Open Correctional Institutions (OCIs).
The bench has directed Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, and West Bengal, where such facilities are functioning most robustly, to share their best practices, applicable rules, guidelines, and experience on setting up, expansion, and management of the OCIs with the NALSA.
The bench has also asked the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to present a status report on recent developments in respect of the OCIs after the introduction of the Model Prison Manual, 2016, and the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act, 2023.
The JDA’s decision, in this context, therefore, is bizarre, and may lead to contempt of the Supreme Court’s order.
Open prisons have been found to be humane, safer and inexpensive to maintain. They provide a better opportunity for rehabilitation and reformation of offenders. The benefits of open prison model are aligned to basic human rights of justice, liberty and dignity, to which prisoners are equally entitled like non-prisoners.
According to an estimate, the cost per prisoner in Jaipur central prison’s closed prison is Rs 7,094 per month, whereas at the Sanganer open prison, the cost per prisoner is only Rs 500 per month. With approximately 356 prisoners in Sanganer open prison, the operational costs are substantially lower. Additionally, 0pen prisons require only one staff member per 80 prisoners, in contrast to the extensive staff and security apparatus required for closed prisons.
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Closed prisons lead to depression among the inmates, as they are socially cut-off from the rest of the society. As nearly 80% of the offences are committed because of the heat of the moment, closed prisons would make those convicted for such offences, hardened criminals. The Supreme Court has consistently emphasised the importance of open prisons for the rehabilitation and reformation of prisoners, recognising them as essential elements of the correctional system.
In Sunil Batra v Delhi Administration (1978), the court underscored the need for open prisons as pivotal for prisoner rehabilitation. This stance was reaffirmed in Prem Shankar Shukla v Delhi Administration (1980) highlighting the government’s obligation to provide adequate reformatory facilities.
Recent judgments including Inhuman Conditions in 1382 Prisons (2016) have expanded the scope of open prisons to include women and juveniles and reinforced their critical role in the correctional system.
The Rajasthan high court is currently seized by a suo motu petition which seeks its intervention and direction to the state government to uphold the rights and dignity of individuals in its custody, as failure to address the current inadequacies could result in significant legal and ethical violations.
In the last hearing before the bench of Justices Inderjeet Singh and Bhuwan Goyal on July 23, the Rajasthan advocate general, Rajendra Prasad Gupta, according to those familiar with the case, had orally submitted to the high court that the state government would not touch the lands occupied by the Sanganer open prison, for the purpose of expanding the satellite hospital. He sought eight weeks time to submit the status report in the case, with the bench agreeing to list the matter on September 25.
The state government’s go ahead to the eviction plan by allotting the land to the health department on July 30 while the proceedings before the high court and the Supreme Court with a bearing on the eviction are pending, therefore, has dismayed observers.
According to an unofficial estimate, the state government has allotted two-thirds of the Sanganer open prison’s land for the satellite hospital expansion project. In the case before the high court, it has been observed that the healthcare needs of the Sanganer region should be addressed without compromising the functionality and benefits of the open prison. The valuable rehabilitative environment provided by the open prison should not be jeopardised, it has been submitted to the high court.
With the Rajasthan high Court hearing the matter, the case is sub-judice as far as the Rajasthan government is concerned, and the state government has not thought it appropriate to issue a clarification in the light of allegations that the JDA’s July 30 decision is in contempt of both the high court and the Supreme Court.
V. Venkatesan is an independent legal journalist based in New Delhi.
