Above: Central Jail in Bhopal has only one doctor/Photo: Gagan Nayar

An NHRC report has found that the state’s jails are woefully short of doctors and don’t have funds to appoint them on a part-time basis either

~By Rakesh Dixit in Bhopal

Prakash Jatav, 56, was an undertrial lodged in Jaura sub-jail in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh, along with his three sons, on the charge of murder. He had been complaining of chest pain for many days but the jail authorities had no doctor to gauge the seriousness of his ailment. As his condition deteriorated, Jatav was first brought to a local health centre and then to the district hospital where he died on December 16.

His death would have gone unnoticed like other such cases if a newspaper had not reported the incident with shocking details about the acute shortage of doctors in Madhya Pradesh jails and the resultant deaths of prisoners. Last year, two convicts in Morena jail died of cardiac arrest for want of timely treatment, and a subsequent health check-up conducted in the jail found 42 inmates suffering from tuberculosis.

In the last five years alone, 733 prisoners have died in various jails in Madhya Pradesh, according to National Crime Record Bureau figures. Most were due to cardiac arrest, contagious diseases like tuberculosis and the absence of regular medical check-ups of ill prisoners.   

ABYSMAL STATE

Shockingly, it was revealed after Jatav’s death that out of 51 sanctioned posts for doctors in jails, 46 were vacant. Six out of 11 central and all 40 district jails were without doctors. Only the central jails of Bhopal, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Satna and Indore had a doctor each.

Taking suo motu cognisance of the newspaper report, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) asked its deputy inspector general (investigation) to conduct an on-the-spot inquiry and submit a report within six weeks. An NHRC press release said: “The state being custodian of the inmates, is liable to take care of their health issues. Deaths of the prisoners in such a large number, due to lack of medical facilities, is violation of Right to Life and Health of the poor prisoners.” Jails manage with the part-time services of doctors from Primary Health Centres and district hospitals. “As a result, prisoners, suffering from serious ailments, fail to get timely treatment. Even if the jail administration calls a doctor, they have to pay Rs 500 as their fee, as a result only in very serious cases doctors from outside are called,” NHRC said.

FILL POSTS

The jails department is happy about the on-the-spot investigation of jails as it hopes the NHRC inquiry will yield positive results and the government will be obliged to fill the vacant posts of doctors. A senior jail officer told India Legal that the department had been demanding that the posts of doctors be filled for a long time but the government had not heeded its demand.

“It is true that we should have doctors in all 11 central and 40 district jails but we have only five doctors. We have been demanding filling of the posts and the government is to take a decision on it,” Additional Director General of Police GR Meena said.

However, given the paucity of government medical officers in the state, it is unlikely that the vacant posts of doctors in jails will be filled anytime soon. According to figures from the health department, there are more than 3,300 sanctioned posts of medical officers. But more than 1,200 are vacant. Likewise, 1,400 posts of specialists are vacant against 3,000 sanctioned posts. And with medical officers and specialists retiring from the service every year, these vacancies are increasing.

MP’s Health Minister Rustam Singh has repeatedly said that the state government is trying hard to fill the vacancies. But with the paucity of qualified doctors, this is easier said than done. In the last five years, it has not found as many medical officers and specialists as required.

This is despite the department regularly recruiting personnel through the MP Public Service Commission and advertising the vacancies.

DAILY CHECK-UP

Early last year, the Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission (MPHRC) too had blamed jail authorities for poor healthcare facilities for prisoners. It made this observation after taking cognisance of the death of a 70-year-old prisoner, Ghasita, in June 2016. He was brought to Bhopal for treatment of a liver ailment but could not be saved.

In January 2016, MPHRC had recommended that the jail department do a daily check-up of ill prisoners and a doctor be deputed for the same. It said the frequency of visits of a doctor to a jail should be increased from the present 10 times a month. It also recommended that the jail headquarters have a list of prisoners suffering from serious physical or mental disorders. It said that jail officials did not take the health of prisoners seriously, resulting in a high prevalence of physical and mental ailments and leading to many deaths.

Madhya Pradesh, incidentally, has the third highest number of jail inmates suffering from mental illness, according to Prison Statistics India—2015. There are 453 people lodged in different jails of MP with mental illnesses. Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 781, while Odisha has 554, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. MP also has the second highest prisoner occupancy rate—140 prisoners in jails against the authorised capacity of 100.

EMPTY PROMISE

In the wake of the prison statistics of 2015, Rustam Singh had promised in September 2016 that 51 doctors and nurses trained to deal with mental health problems would be appointed in all the 51 district hospitals soon. But that has not happened so far.

A senior jail officer said on condition of anonymity that it was not possible to follow the MPHRC recommendations as it entailed big expenditure and the department was unable to call doctors due to budgetary constraints. “A doctor charges a minimum Rs 500 for each jail visit. We have 46 jails without doctors. If doctors were to visit more than 10 times a month in each of these jails, their fees would cost the department lakhs every month,” said the officer.

The condition of MP’s jails mirrors the pitiable condition of medical services all over the state, which has the third highest number of doctors’ vacancies in government hospitals. On July 25, 2016, then Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Faggan Singh Kulaste had stated in the Rajya Sabha that Rajasthan had the highest number of doctor vacancies of 4,124, followed by West Bengal with 2,274 and MP with 1,161. It is time the state woke up and realised that prisoners are also human beings.