KOCHI: Expressing concern over mentally ill persons languishing in prisons, the Kerala High Court has directed the state government to set up a mental health centre, as stipulated in Section 103(6) of the Mental Healthcare Act, in at least one prison in the state to take care of such prisoners.
Justice VG Arun in his judgment also quoted an excerpt from the novel Don Quixote: “They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder, for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeling.”
The court said the case is about the powerless, voiceless mentally ill prisoners languishing in prisons and mental health centres for years together, embroiled in a legal quagmire and abandoned by family and friends. The system and the society presume them to be devoid of knowledge and feeling, thereby turning them into stone.
It's reckoned that there are 77 convicts/remand prisoners undergoing treatment in government mental health centres in Kerala, of whom 22 are continuing after acquittal as of August 2020. Of the other 55 prisoners, 48 are undertrial prisoners and seven are convicts, as per Kerala Legal Services Authority (KELSA).
The court also directed the state government to forthwith constitute Mental Health Review Boards under Section 73 of the Mental Healthcare Act. The boards should ensure that prisoners with mental illness are allowed to live with dignity and be treated as equal to persons with physical illness. The transfer of a prisoner with mental illness to a mental health establishment shall only be with the prior permission of the Boards.
The court also ordered the Mental Health Review Boards to make available details of the mentally ill remand prisoners detained in jails and mental health establishments to the Kerala State Legal Services Authority so that the secretary, KELSA, may bring deserving cases to the notice of the High Court to enable it to take an appropriate decision on the judicial side.
The court also directed the state government, with the assistance of the KELSA, to take necessary steps to trace the relatives of acquitted mentally ill prisoners and of the undertrial prisoners fit for rehabilitation and persuade their family members to provide necessary care and protection to those persons. If the family members of the acquitted mentally ill persons refuse to take them back, the state government should take steps for their rehabilitation by transferring them to willing registered mental health establishments. Once the mentally ill acquitted person is shifted to a mental health establishment, the amount fixed under shall be disbursed to that establishment.
The court also suggested amendment of the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure in tune with the provisions of the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017. Not only terminology such as "lunatic", but the procedure prescribed in Chapter XXV of the Cr.P.C also had to be amended, the court observed.
