Maja Daruwala has been the Executive Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) since 1996. CHRI is a leading international NGO that advocates for good governance and the building of open societies, with a special focus on police and prison reforms, sexual minority rights, and the right to information. In a candid interview with Preshti, Maja opens up on her thoughts regarding the legal situation of prisoners in India, the problems faced by the Indian criminal justice system and the crucial role that CHRI has played over the years in providing justice to undertrials languishing in prisons.

P: Hello Ms. Daruwala. Please tell us something about yourself.

MD: I have been working in the area of civil liberties, accountability transparency and general good governance (though frankly this last is being given a bad name lately) for over 20 years. I studied law after 10 years of marriage and two children and have never looked back. I think when you have the privilege of education and leisure you must work purposefully for the public good all the time.

P: Please give us an insight into your work so far? What inspired you to take it up?

MD: I believe the principles of human rights gives us the basic tenets to live in peace and harmony. For me this is not a cliché. Each time if you analyse conflict it arises out of injustice. Law gives us the common language in which to address conflict without violence. The absence of access to justice is the root cause of conflict. So its important to work on improving systems so that they are available to people and credible. This is why we work on access to justice. We work on access to information so that we have the tools with which to access justice.

P: What are the basic problems faced by prisoners in India today?

MD: Lack of justice. There are too many people arrested on flimsy cooked up grounds. There are two few people with too little education and motivation guarding the gateways that would prevent them being in prison in the first place. Unfair trial practices and lax processes mean we can never be certain that convictions are well founded and well grounded. In India the system is in crises and used by the police for their own conveniences rather than to fight crime or bring the right folks to justice. On the other hand the police, prosecutors, defence lawyers, clerks, court staff and magistrates as well as jailors are all being asked to do a job that is well beyond their skill levels. All this is known to the rulers of the moment but the system is convenient to the powerful and will remain this way until public opinion itself changes. At the purely physical level in prison of course there is lack of everything – lack of oversight of prisons, lack of review, lack of space, lack of security, surfeit of violence, undue restrictions because of shortages of staff, corruption and criminality are rife and prison, even for a short time, is a school for crime.

P: Where exactly do you think is India going wrong while tackling prison reformation and crime prevention issues? 

MD: I think I have explained that above. Police and prisons are part of a continuously linked system you can’t have prison reform ( no one has defined that in India in public debate) without reforming the larger  justice delivery system. There is no will to change the justice system. The major arena for giving people formal justice is in the lower courts: whether these are civil causes courts or criminal courts. Yet our concentration is on the high courts and the Supreme Court. We are over congratulatory about the workings of these.  The names we give ourselves to describe our efforts at reform tell the whole story. We have changed the name to ‘correctional facilities’ and yet kept prisons the same: overcrowded, unsanitary, undermanned, and ill supervised. But we continue to refer to these dens as ‘correctional’. That is the level of ‘reform’. Reform indicates newness and change from the old. Can we really claim this. If the governments of the day would but fill in vacancies, skill up staff, and follow the rules they have set in their own prison manuals and judicial procedures the prisons could be said to be ‘reformed’. Today there is retrogression everywhere with a few bright spots being highlighted as overall improvement.

P: What is your organization doing to improve prison conditions?

MD: We assist in legal sustenance. We try to bring out people who have been stuck in prison for a long time, repatriate foreign prisoners who have finished their terms and are sitting around wasting their lives because some bureaucratic manoeuvre has to be gone through. We try to get already-in-place systems to revive so there is a minimum of oversight of prisoners.

P: In your opinion, does the Indian society have a role to play in prisoner’s reformation?

MD: In other countries, local communities have come to the aid of prisoners: first through moral reform movements that gradually metamorphosed into genuine physical and legal assistance. Communities in India have not been forthcoming in rehabilitation. There is a strong stigma attached to being associated with prisoners and a sense of danger which prevents individuals coming forward to assist prisoners. Also general levels of exploitation of vulnerable people discourages employment of prisoners by those who offer because one cannot guarantee the conditions they would work under. If there was real oversight of released prisoners, probation services were not so short-staffed and under-skilled, and surrounding systems worked, one could imagine the community coming forward to help. There is potential for this but it needs to be built.

P: What according to you needs to be done to improve prison conditions further?

MD:There is no ‘further’. You have to begin with an overhaul of the prison services which should not be manned by police officers. Then move on to accountability of duty holders across the judicial system, then get the over-crowding and physical situation right. And much more.

P:Anything else you would like to say before signing off?

MD:I think we must stop pretending that the formal legal system is working at all, let alone working well. If we stop the denial we may get to a solution. The malaise is known, the solutions are known. There is no one to take on making the radical – or even incremental –changes.

-(As told to Nitika Nagar)