HC notice to govt on women’s health in jail

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday issued a notice to the Maharashtra government and sought its response on healthcare facilities available to undertrial women

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Friday issued a notice to the Maharashtra government and sought its response on healthcare facilities available to undertrial women in prisons across the state.

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A bench of justices VK Tahilramani and Mridula Bhatkar gave the state’s counsel time till Tuesday to file an affidavit.

Hearing a suo moto Public Interest Litigation (PIL), the bench had taken cognisance of a letter written to Justice Abhay S Oka, the guardian judge of the HC.

It was written by a sessions court judge, Anju Shende, who had inspected the Byculla prison in April this year.

In Byculla, Shende had encountered a severely-ill 20- year- old undertrial prisoner, Shohana, who was 14 weeks pregnant. She also had a five-month-old child who was prone to epileptic fits and other ailments.

She told Shende that given the health of her child and her own deteriorating medical condition, she was in no state to give birth to another child and sought the judge’s help in getting permission for medical termination of her pregnancy.

A vacation bench of the high court granted the permission in May this year and she was also shifted out of the prison and sent to a government hospital for the treatment.

Justice Oka, however, took up the larger issue of women prisoners’ health and converted Shende’s letter into a PIL.