Chennai: Prisoners belonging to Dalit and tribal communities in the state are expected to benefit most by the Supreme Court order to release undertrial prisoners languishing in the jails for a long time.
According to the National Crime Record Bureau’s Prison Statistics India 2012, a total of 7,994 undertrial prisoners were lodged in various prisons in the state. Of them, 3,442 prisoners belonged to the Schedule Caste and 898 prisoners to the Scheduled Tribes. About 2,879 prisoners belong to OBC while rest of the prisoners are categorised as “Others”.
Both the SC and ST prisoners constitute about 54 per cent of the total undertrial prisoners in the state where the combined SC and ST population stands at 20 per cnt. Incidentally, the national average of SC and ST undertrial prisoners is only 35 per cent.
VCK general secretary D. Ravikumar said that Dalits here are being victimised like the African Americans in the US who were booked in the false cases. “More number of SCs and STs are being held as undertrials in the jails than any other communities. It only shows there is discrimination in our penal system,” he said.
Human rights activist Professor Kalyani said the police booking undetected theft cases on tribal communities like Irulas and Kuravars are common in the state. “I have sent a petition to Chief Minister and director general of police listing out names of 32 persons belonging to Irulas against whom multiple false cases were filed in Villupuram and Cuddalore districts,” Ravikumar told DC.
He noted that in one particular case, an Irula man was booked for stealing 15 bikes. “But he did not even know how to drive a bike,” he said.
Though the Criminal Tribes Act was abolished long time ago, the denotified tribes like Kuravas still suffer from the “criminal tribes” stigma, said A.V. Shanmugham, organiser, TN Kuravan Tribal Development Association.
“If a theft happened somewhere, the police used to pick up the innocent people belonging to Kurava community. Police affix “Kurava” before the name of the accused and give publicity in media,” he said.
A senior police officer said that no persons were arrested based on their caste. “Whoever are involved in the crime irrespective of their caste, we will arrest them and remand them,” the official said, adding that over 2000 undertrials were released from the jails in the prison adalat conducted last Sunday.
