Court gets prisoner parole for daughter's funeral

It took a lashing from the court for a convict to finally get parole from the jail authorities to attend to the last rites of his daughter.

It took a lashing from the court for a convict to finally get parole from the jail authorities to attend to the last rites of his daughter.

"Don't you have a human approach or is it only with the film stars that you act humanly", the court said in an apparent reference to repeat paroles being given to the Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt.

Following this comment, the jail authorities granted parole to the prisoner.

The comments came during a hearing in the Nagpur bench of Bombay high court on Thursday. The court was livid when it learnt that repeated requests of a Mumbai blast convict, Mohd Yakub Abdul Majid, who had lost his daughter, to the civic and jail authorities for parole had gone unheard.

The court said it was distressing that a man who genuinely needed parole was being denied it and the whole approached of the authorities seemed to be selective.

On February 14, Yakub's wife had written to the divisional commissioner and jail authorities seeking his release as their daughter had died three days earlier. But even after 10 days, no decision was taken by the authorities, forcing her to approach the court.

Incidentally, Sanjay Dutt too is also undergoing a prison term for possessing firearms in connection with the same blasts.