SUNIL BATRA CHARLES GURMUKH SOBRAJ Vs. DELHI ADMINISTRATION:DELHI ADMINISTRATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE province of prison justice, the conceptualization of freedom behind bars and the role of judicial power as constitutional sentinel in a prison setting, are of the gravest moment in a world of escalating torture by the minions of State, and in India, where this virgin area of jurisprudence is becoming painfully relevant. Therefore, explicative length has been the result;and so it is that, with all my reverence for and concurrence with my learned brethren on the jurisdictional and jurisprudential basics they have indicated, I have preferred to plough a lonely furrow.

(2.) ONE important interrogation lies at the root of these twin writ petitions: Does a prison setting, ipso facto, out-law the rule of law, lock out the judicial process from the jail gates and declare a long holiday for human rights of convicts in confinement, and (to change the metaphor) if there is no total eclipse, what luscent segment is open for judicial justice? Three inter-related problems project themselves: (i) a jurisdictional dilemma between 'hands off prisons' and 'take over jail administration' (ii) a constitutional conflict between detentional security and innate liberties and (iii) the role of processual and substantive reasonableness in stopping brutal jail conditions. In such basic situations, pragmatic sensitivity, belighted by the preamble to the Constitution and balancing the vulnerability of 'caged' humans to State torment and the prospect of escape or internal disorder, should be the course for the court to navigate.

(3.) THE 'hands-off' doctrine is based on the fallacious foundation stated in 1871 in Ruffin v. Commonwealth: