NEW DELHI: As 23-year-old *Simran speaks of her current job as an office assistant at an NGO, her calm demeanour does not give away what she has weathered in the past year. Before June 2017, she did not know which part of the country the Tihar jail is. Out on bail from South Asia’s largest prison complex four months later, she is trying to pick up the pieces of her life.
Life almost shut its doors on the young woman after the police told her she and her mother were named in an FIR in an alleged case of dowry death. She was days away from appearing for her final year graduation exams when her sister-in-law committed suicide at their home in northwest Delhi’s Mubarakpur Dabas.“Jab mujhe bola gaya ki mai jail jaungi uss time mujhe laga sab khatam (When I was told I will be sent to jail, I felt everything is over),” she breaks down while speaking.
She recounts how the undignified life inside the women’s prison in jail number 6 at Tihar still haunts her — the food which she refused to eat in the beginning and then fell in line with, the suffocating toilet stench when she was lodged in a small room with two others which she tried to battle with talcum powder, the sweltering heat in the cells, and the inevitable question “what next” when she was released from prison.
Women, when lodged in prisons, tend to lose family support, housing, income, custody of children, say experts. While they may be engaged in a range of activities inside the prison, what continues to ail the criminal justice system is the lack of a comprehensive post-release rehabilitation programme.
The criminal justice system remains largely silent on post-release rehabilitation even though several schemes exist on paper, says Sunil Gupta, former law officer at Tihar jail. For 45-year-old *Indah who has spent over nine years in Tihar, she says all she wants is to go home in Jakarta in Indonesia “soon”. But over the years, she has lost contact with her son and other relatives. At jail 6, she takes care of the library. She has little idea how to grapple with the “real world”.
Indah’s narrative of a bleak future finds resonance in most women’s accounts at Tihar. Even though they are engaged in a range of activities such as weaving, candle-making, beautician’s course, working at the fashion laboratory inside the prison, they remain worried how they would negotiate life after their release. The likes of *Meenu, 41, who has spent over 12 years here and *Rakhi, 28, who has spent close to four years at the jail fumble when asked how they would start building their lives beyond Tihar.
“If women are making papad inside the prison, where do they get the capital or market to continue with papad making after their release? If they are receiving computer lessons inside the prison, do they have access to a computer post release?” says advocate Anu Narula, who has been working with Tihar inmates for over a decade now.
For *Suchi, the last few years can be rounded up in a few words: four years, four months and four days — the period she was in jail as an accused in her husband’s murder case. Now out on bail, she got back to her feet with the help of her sister and is now resiliently reconstructing herself and her daughters’ lives by working at a production unit of herbal products at an NGO and fighting the social stigma of “being in jail”. A woman serving a jail term is more unacceptable in society than a man, points out a jail official.
The prison authorities say they have a range of activities to provide women with different aptitudes, which is suited to their interests and aid in their rehabilitation.
For *Rani, the last 12 years she has spent in Tihar has not taken away her hope to resume her life outside the prison barracks. “I will return to my small boutique and spend time stitching and designing clothes. I will be around my family. Her eyes shine bright as she drapes mannequins at the jail’s fashion laboratory.”
(*Names of all prisoners at Tihar and former prisoners changed to maintain anonymity)
