Rights of prison inmates must be upheld

Prison overcrowding, which has long been an issue for Bangladesh, has reportedly taken a turn for the worse of late. As per Prothom Alo, citing data from the Department of Prisons, the 68 prisons in the country are housing nearly 88,000 inmates, more than double their collective capacity. Given the recent spate of arrests in the country, with police allegedly making elaborate lists of BNP leaders and activists for arrest, one can safely assume that the situation will get even worse in the coming weeks ahead of the upcoming election.

Division-wise statistics show that, except for Sylhet, jails in all the other divisions are housing inmates way beyond their capacity. Dhaka jails are housing 2.3 inmates in the space of one. Chattogram jails have 2.47 prisoners in the space of one. Rajshahi jails are the most overwhelmed, holding triple the number of prisoners that they are equipped for. Resources are already limited in these jails—for example, there are only six doctors for all the jails, against the approved posts of 141, and not one gynaecologist for female prisoners. This paints a horrendous picture of the inhumane conditions inside jails.

What’s more alarming is that nearly 76 percent of the inmates—about 67,000—are under trial. In cases under certain laws, the accused are left to rot in prisons. One may recall Khadijatul Kubra, the Jagannath University student who has been languishing in prison for more than a year after being arrested under the Digital Security Act, her bail stayed by the highest court. If a person is innocent until proven guilty, why is such a large number of under-trial people being treated like convicts even before they are declared so?

This cannot be an acceptable state of affairs in a country where the government claims to uphold the rule of law. To uphold the legal and human rights of prison inmates, the authorities must ensure that trials are not dragged out for indefinite periods of time. They should also provide necessary resources so that inmates can live in a humane environment where their physical and mental well-being is ensured.