Female prisoners are ‘supplied’ to male inmates of West Bengal jails, sexual abuse is commonplace and hundreds of children are born in prison. But the women are too scared to speak out. “As of January, this year, there were 196 children living with their incarcerated mothers across West Bengal prisons,” says Tapas Kumar Bhanja, citing figures shared with him by the state government after he was made “amicus curiae”, or expert adviser, to the Calcutta high court in 2018….
Sarah Aziz
When Tapas Kumar Bhanja was appointed to investigate conditions in West Bengal’s overcrowded prisons in 1990, he was not prepared for what he discovered. Women in prisons were being sexually abused by male inmates, according to the now 66-year-old lawyer. Many of the survivors gave birth after the assaults.
Lucy (not her real name) was 13 when the well-to-do family she worked for as a domestic help reported her to the police, alleging theft. “It was almost 25 years ago,” says Lucy, who has a speech disability and holds up her fingers to indicate the numbers. After being held for a month in an adult prison, Lucy was taken in a police van to appear in court, escorted by two police officials.
On the way back from the court, Lucy was gagged and blindfolded and raped by the two police officials and the driver of the van. She motions to show that she froze when they pinned her down and took off her clothes. After the authorities were notified she was transferred to a government shelter. Eight months later, Lucy gave birth to a daughter.
Thirty-four years after starting his first investigation, at the request of the Calcutta high court, Bhanja says the plight of women in Indian prisons may be even worse now. “Sexual abuse of incarcerated women is still a reality in West Bengal,” says Bhanja. “Women are being sexually assaulted in custody. As recently as in early 2020, over a dozen incarcerated women I interviewed in West Bengal told me privately that they were all assaulted in custody and became pregnant.”
West Bengal has only one prison exclusively for women, known as a “correctional home”. Elsewhere in the state, the 1,885 or so female prisoners are kept in sections of men’s prisons, where wealthy or powerful inmates often have privileges that allow them access to other areas. The abuse starts on the day the women are sent to prison, according to Bhanja, as they pass through the male wards to enter the female enclosures.
On 8 February, Bhanja presented his findings – based on hundreds of interviews with female prisoners – to the high court in Kolkata in a formal request for judicial intervention known as a writ petition. The next day, the Indian supreme court expressed concerns over his report.
Bhanja described the conditions prisoners in the state were living under as “inhuman”, citing instances such as the murder of a man in custody, evidence regarding torture in prisons being concealed. He also noted claims that female inmates were becoming pregnant while in custody and giving birth in prison, despite there being no law that allows conjugal visits to prisoners.
“As of January, this year, there were 196 children living with their incarcerated mothers across West Bengal prisons,” says Bhanja, citing figures shared with him by the state government after he was made “amicus curiae”, or expert adviser, to the Calcutta high court in 2018….
____________________________
Aryeh Neier, an American human rights activist who co-wrote a 1991 report on prison conditions in India, documenting the gruelling reality of rape in custody and consequent pregnancies, says he is not surprised to learn that the abuses he reported more than three decades ago are still prevalent.
“Those abuses include the sexual exploitation of many female detainees as well as some male detainees. Over the years, there have been several scathing reports on India’s prisons and jails. These do not seem to lead to significant changes.
“This should be a source of national embarrassment,” says Neier, who co-founded Human Rights Watch.
****************************************************
After the truth-shower 