KATHMANDU, JULY 23
The Office of the Auditor General has told the government to fully adhere to the provisions mentioned in the existing Prison Act for improvement of the pathetic condition of prisoners and detainees.
As per the law, male and female prisoners or detainees should be kept in separate buildings and if this is not possible, they are required to be accommodated in different parts of the buildings so that they cannot meet or talk to each other. The law also makes it mandatory for prison authorities to keep adults, sexual and gender minorities, senior citizens and sick people separately in jails. However, this has not been implemented in the country. There is a provision of segregating detainees and prisoners under 21 years of age and those above 21 years.
Similarly, prisoners of civil and criminal cases, sick detainees or prisoners, and detainees or prisoners with mental health problems should be kept in separate rooms and prisoners convicted in criminal cases should be kept in separate rooms.
Those involved in serious and minor crimes, those whose cases have been decided, those who have been convicted and who have been remanded to judicial custody for trial have been kept at same place without segregation.
"The government needs to put the legal provisions into practice to systematise the accommodation of prisoners or detainees," the OAG said in its 59th annual report (2020-21). It said there were a total of 24,559 prisoners or detainees in prisons across the country as of mid-July 2021, against the accommodation capacity of 16,511.
The country has 74 prisons in 72 of 77 districts. Bhaktapur, Bara and Dhanusha do not have any prison, while Kathmandu and Dang have two prisons each. The OAG has also urged the government to implement the concept of open prison in the country, as the construction of open prison facility in Ganapur of Banke is in the final phase. The government has acquired around 535 ropani land for construction of the open prison with a capacity to accommodate 3,000 inmates. The Criminal Offences (Sentencing and Execution) Act, 2017 stipulates a provision allowing inmates, who have served at least two-thirds of their sentence, to be sent to an open prison.
A district judge may, on the recommendation of the jailer concerned, send any prisoner, who has served at least twothirds of jail sentence and has demonstrated good conduct, to open prison. The existing law has defined open prison as any place except regular prisons specified by the government to hold prisoners in such a manner that he/she is allowed to go outside the place where he/she is detained and do certain work for a certain period with minimum supervision.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 24, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
