The Supreme Court on Thursday made it clear that caste-based discrimination in prisons across the country would not be tolerated and registered a suo motu case to monitor the issue [Sukanya Shantha vs Union of India and ors].

A Bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra warned States that they would be held liable if any caste-based discrimination is found in prisons.

The Court made it clear that prisoners from oppressed castes cannot be assigned menial, degrading or inhumane work merely because they belonged to marginalised castes. It, therefore, struck down rules enabling such practices from the prison manuals of certain States.

"We have held that assigning cleaning and sweeping to marginalized and assigning cooking to higher caste is nothing but a violation of Article 15. Such indirect uses of phrases which target so called lower castes cannot be used within our constitutional framework, even if caste is not explicitly mentioned, 'menial' etc. targets the same," the Court said.

The Court also ordered the deletion of caste details of prisoners from prison registrars.

"All such provisions (enabling caste discrimination) are held to be unconstitutional. All States are directed to make changes in accordance with the judgment. References to habitual offenders shall be in reference to the habitual offender legislations and all such references of habitual offenders in state prison manuals are declared as unconstitutional. Caste column in convict or undertrial registrars shall be deleted. This court takes suo motu cognizance of discrimination inside prisons and registry is directed to list In re: discrimination inside prisons after three months and States shall submit compliance report with this judgment before the court," the Court ordered.

Further, the Court made it clear that members of denotified tribes cannot be viewed as members of habitual crime groups. It took critical note that there were prison manuals that were reaffirming such discrimination, and termed such an approach incorrect.

In its judgment today, the Court also noted that caste discrimination can be both direct or indirect and that stereotypes can contribute to such discrimination. The State has a positive obligation to prevent the same, the Bench said.

It also emphasised that the dignity of prisoners must be protected.

“Not providing dignity to prisoners is a relic of colonial period where they were dehumanised. The Constitution mandates that prisoners have to be treated humanely and prison system must be aware of mental and physical state of prisoners,” the Court said.

The Court further noted that the Prison Manual in Uttar Pradesh says that no person undergoing simple imprisonment will do menial work “unless his caste is used to do such jobs.” The Bench criticised such provisions, observing:

“We hold that no group is born as scavenger class or to do or not do menial jobs. Classes who can cook and who cannot cook are aspects of untouchability, which cannot be permitted. Class-based prejudice is perpetuated when denotified tribe members are treated as criminal and dishonest from birth. We have reimagined Article 21 with a section on right to overcome caste based discrimination.”

Similarly, the Court criticised prison manual rules that said that sweepers should be chosen from Hari or Chandal castes, terming such an approach as “entirely opposed to substantive equality.”

“Such practices lead to unfair division of labour in the prisons. The type of labour assignment based on caste etc. cannot be permitted. Article 23 strikes at this aspect,” the Court said.

The Court added that no prisoner must be made to do hazardous work such as the cleaning of sewer tankers.

The judgment came on a plea filed by journalist Sukanya Shantha, who has extensively reported on caste-based discrimination in prison barracks.

The petition pointed out that prison manuals in several States encourage caste discrimination.

The top court had in January issued notice to the Union government and eleven States in the matter, while acknowledging the gravity of the issue raised. It had also called upon Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta to assist the Court.

The plea before the Court detailed the caste-based discrimination in jails and how it extended to manual labor assignments, affecting denotified tribes and those categorised as habitual offenders.

The petition, thus, sought the repeal of discriminatory provisions found in prison manuals of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, Odisha, Jharkhand, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Senior Advocate Dr. S Muralidhar and advocates Prasanna S and Disha Wadekar appeared for the Shantha.

Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati also assisted the Court in the matter.

[Read judgment]

[Read Live Coverage]