The Maharashtra government informed the Bombay High Court on Monday that as per law no prison in the state follows the system of solitary confinement of convicts. The State claimed that persons convicted for heinous offences such as bomb blasts cases are kept separately than others.
The HC was hearing a petition filed by 2010 German bakery blast case convict Himayat Baig claiming he has been kept in solitary confinement at the Nashik central prison since the last 12 years. He sought to be shifted out of solitary confinement. Baig is serving a life sentence in the blast case.
Public Prosecutor Hiten Venegaonkar told a division bench of Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Prithviraj Chavan that no prison follows solitary confinement presently. “Presently, we don’t follow solitary confinement at all. We just separate convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for serious and heinous offences like blasts and so on from the other convicts,” Venegaonkar said. He clarified that there is a distinction between solitary confinement and being kept separately from other convicts.
Citing section 11 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Venegaonkar said that only a court, which has convicted the accused and sentenced him, has the power to order the accused to be kept in solitary confinement for a period not exceeding three months.
The HC has asked Venegaonkar to file an affidavit stating the same and posted the matter for hearing after two weeks.
In February 2010, a bomb blast in the German Bakery, a popular eatery amongst foreigners in Pune, killed 17 persons and injured 60 others. Baig was the only person to be convicted in the case. Six others persons, including Yasin Bhatkal, who is alleged to have planted the bomb, are still absconding.
