A new rule restricting the number of books a prisoner can possess, at the high-security Viyyur Central Jail in Kerala’s Thrissur, has peeved inmates, including those pursuing education and research activities.
In a fresh order, the security officer of the correctional institution has said a prisoner cannot keep more than five books in his possession as “a book is a thing of security threat”.
Experts have denounced the decision stating that considering books as things that pose a challenge to security and asking inmates to restrict the number of books in their possession violate the settled principles of law governing the rights of prisoners.
TK Rajeevan, an undertrial in Viyyur central jail, was arrested for alleged links with the banned CPI (Maoist) party. He was charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and relevant sections of IPC for allegedly participating in a series of camps organised by CPI (Maoist) and its armed wing people’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) in the Irulai forest of Nilambur in 2016.
Rajeevan, who has been in jail since his arrest on November 20, 2020, is currently engaged in academic research and needs to read as many books and periodicals relevant to his subject of research as possible, his lawyer Thushar Nirmal Sarathy has said. Rajeevan, in his complaint to the trial court, has alleged that even though a friend of his delivered 26 books including eight issues of Economic and Political Weekly on November 27, 2021 at the prison, the same were not passed on to him by authorities.
“According to the Kerala Jail and Correctional Services Act and subsequent rules, prisoners are entitled to have books from outside. The freedom to keep books and to read is a right entitled to prisoners since the time of the colonial rule which was upheld by the Constitution later,” reads Rajeevan’s complaint.
“A prisoner is not entitled to have all the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, but the right to think, read and study is the same for a prisoner as that for an independent citizen,” it says. During the pendency of the petition, the Security Officer at the Viyyur prison issued an order on January 6, 2022, further restricting the number of books that a prisoner can keep at a time.
“They did this even before his grievance was addressed. According to the order, prisoners cannot keep more than five books at a time. All the prisoners are instructed to surrender the books beyond this limit to the welfare officer. This is against all existing legal principles, even that established by the Supreme Court of India,” Sarathy said.
S Santhosh, the Deputy Inspector General of Prisons, justified the order of the security officer and said “a pile of books can be a security threat” as “anything can be concealed in books.”
