JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA

FACULTY OF LAW
B.A.L.LB

IV SEMESTER (REGULAR)

II YEAR

STUDENT ID: 20183052

ROLL NO. : 07

INDIAN PENAL CODE ASSIGNMENT

TOPIC: SOLIDARITY CONFINEMENT

SUBMITTED TO: SAMIA KHAN

SUNMITTED BY: ADIBA KHAN

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TABLE OF CONTENT

1. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………………………………….3

2. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………4

3. ORIGIN OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT…………………………………………..

………..5

4. SOLITARY CONFINEMENT UNDER INDIAN PENAL CODE……………………………..

….6

5. INDIAN LANDMARK CASES REFERRING SOLITARY

CONFINEMENT……………………….7

 SUNIL BATRA

 UNNI KRISHNAN & ORS. V. STATE OF ANDHRA PRADESH & ORS

 T.V.VATHEESWARAN V. STATE OF TAMIL NADU

6. PRISONER’S RIGHTS UNDER THE PRISONS ACT, 1894

…………………………………..9

7. EFFECTS AND IMPACTS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT…………………………….

…….10

8. CONCLUSION

…………………………………………………………………………….11

9. BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………..12

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It is my imperative duty to thank the following people for the successful completion of my
assignment on the topic of ‘SOLITARY CONFINEMENT’.

Samia Khan brings the clarity of the Topic and providing the sufficient material which
enables me to understand the topic clearly.
Also I am highly oblidge to her for providing the constant guidance in each stage of the
project.

Also I am thakful to E-Library provided by the Faculty which enables me to excess different
resourecs and help me to complete this assignment in such crucial time

ADIBA KHAN

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INTRODUCTION:

As per Cambrige Dictionary Solitary confinement means “A punishment in which someone

is kept in a room alone, usually in a prison.”1 Or the placement of a prisoner in a holding cell
alone and away from all other prisoners, frequently as a method of discipline but potentially to
prevent harm or injury to the prisoner. When a form of punishment, confinement may be harsh
and the cell may be almost completely devoid of light and sound.2

Basically one can say Solitary confinement refers to the act of being kept alone in a cell, without
being able to see or speak to other prisoners. This is intended to influence the prisoner
psychologically. Solitary confinement is usually awarded in serious crimes. Solitary confinement
is very rare and employed for serious and dangerous offenders. Although the death penalty is one
of the aforementioned six categories of punishments, it is infrequently applied in the practice of
the judicial punishment under Indian Penal Code.3

Solitary Confinement is one of the hardest punishment and it should be given in a certain manner
and only in serious and geniune cases prisoner is a person and should not be treated like an
animal in this regard J. Krishna Iyer said, “Prisons are built with stones of law' and so it behaves
the court to insist that, in the eye of law, prisoners are persons, not animals, and punish the
deviant 'guardians' of the prison system where they go berserk and defile the dignity of the
human inmate. Prison houses are part of Indian earth and the Indian Constitution cannot be held
at bay by jail officials 'dressed ill a little, brief authority', when Part III is invoked by a convict.
For when a prisoner is traumatized, the Constitution suffers a shock.”
1
Solitary Confinement, available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/solitary-confinement.
2
Meaning of Solitary Confinement, available at: https://dictionary.thelaw.com/solitary-confinement/.
3
J.Sneha and K.Roja. ‘A study on solitary confinement as a punishment’, Volume 120 International Journal of Pure
and Applied Mathematics 864 (2018).

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ORIGIN OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT : In 1829, the first experiment in solitary confinement
within the United States begins at the eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It supported a
Quaker belief that prisoners isolated in stone cells with solely a Bible would use the time to
repent, pray and realise their faults and mistakes. However several of the inmates go insane,
commit suicide, or are not any longer able to operate in society, and also the follow is slowly
abandoned throughout the upcoming years.4

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT UNDER INDIAN PENAL CODE

Under the Indian Penal code Solitary Confinement is “Whenever any person is convicted of an
offence for which under this Code the Court has power to sentence him to rigorous
imprisonment, the Court may, by its sentence, order that the offender shall be kept in solitary
confinement for any portion or portions of the imprisonment to which he is sentenced, not
exceeding three months in the whole, according to the following scale, that is to say a time not
exceeding one month if the term of imprisonment shall not exceed six months; a time not
exceeding two months if the term of imprisonment shall exceed six months and shall not exceed
one year; a time not exceeding three months if the term of imprisonment shall exceed one
year.”5

Where as Sec 74 of IPC defines the of solitary confinement “In executing a sentence of solitary
confinement, such confinement shall in no case exceed fourteen days at a time, with intervals
between the periods of solitary confinement of not less duration than such periods; and when the
imprisonment awarded shall exceed three months, the solitary confinement shall not exceed
seven days in any one month of the whole imprisonment awarded, with intervals between the
periods of solitary confinement of not less duration than such periods.”

The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the
Mandela Rules, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2015, comment
on solitary confinement. Rule 45(1) instructs that solitary confinement can and must only be
used as a “last resort” for “as short a time as possible” and can be “subject to independent
4
Id. at 3.
5
The Indian Penal Code Act, 1860 (45 of 1860), s. 73

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review.” In a landmark 1979 case titled Sunil Batra v Delhi Administration, the Supreme Court
stated, “Any harsh isolation from society by long, lonely, cellular detention is penal and so must
be inflicted only consistently with fair procedure.” It added, “The goal of imprisonment is not
only punitive but restorative, to make an offender a non-offender.”6

It is one of the hardest form of punishemnt in jail which completely removes the company of
family, friends, and curtail every kind of movement in the society 7 in one of the case Madras HC
rules that solitary confinement should not be odered unless there are special features appearing in
the evidences such as extreme brutality or violence or unparalleled atrocity in the commission of
th offence.8 In the case of Sunil Btra SC held that solidarity confinement is harsh isolation
prisoner from the society of the fellow prisoners by cellular detention. s. 29 and 30 of the Prison
Act, 1894, which are penal in the character, insist that solitary confinement must be imposed
only in acccordance with the fair procedure stipulated therein, and in the absence of which, the
confinement becomes violation of Art. 21 of Constitution. In Shatrughan Chauhan v. UOI,9 the
Supreme Court observed that “despite enduring pronouncement on judicial side, the actual
implementation of these provisions is far from reality”, and “urged the jail authorities to
comprehend and implement the actual intent of the verdict in Sunil Batra”.

In the view of the severity and harshness of the solitary confinement, the framers of the penal
code ave specifically provided that in no case the sentenceof the confinement may be imposed
for more than a period of 14 days at a time, and it must be imposed on intervals Further, solitary
confinemnt can be awarded for the offences under the IPC only. It cannot be awarded unless the
punishment is rigrous imprisonment and it is not part of the substantive offence. It, therefore,
cannot be awarded as a part of imorisonment in default of fine.10

6
Nidhi Suresh, ‘Prisoner Mirza Himayat Baig recounts solitary confinement inside an anda cell’, The Caraven, Oct
31, 2019.
7
P.S.A. Pillai, Criminal Law 350 (Lexis Nexis, 14th edn., 2019).
8
Munuswmy v. Crown, AIR 1947 Mad 386.
9
(2014) 3 SCC 1.
10
P.S.A. Pillai, Criminal Law 351 (Lexis Nexis, 14th edn., 2019).

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INDIAN LANDMARK CASES REFERRING SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

1. Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration,11 The facts of the case were ‘Twin writ petitions filed by
Sunil Batra and Charles Sobraj’ The appellant Batra was found guilty by the sessions court of
the offence of murder and was awarded capital sentence in January 1977. Till then he was a ‘B’
Class prisoner eligible for certain amenities. After the death penalty was pronounced, the prison
superintendent striped him off of the ‘B’ Class facilities and locked him up in a single cell with a
small walled yard attached beyond the view of other human beings except the jail guards and
formal visitors who visited in discharge of their official duties and few callers on rare occasions.
He filed an appeal against his conviction and sentence to the High Court which dismissed the
appeal. He also challenged in the High Court his quasi-solitary confinement but without success.
Thereafter he filed the present petition under Article 32 of the constitution of India under Article
14, 19, and 21.

The petitioner Sobraj has been in custody since 1977 having been arrested in a hotel along with
three of his foreign companions. His Interpol dossier is stated to be terrible and his exploits
include jail break and grave crimes. He had been continuously subjected to torturesome bar
fetters for 24 hrs, every day of the month, for nearly two years. In a petition under Article 32 he
complained against the persistence of bar fetters under Section 56 of the Prisons act, 1894.
Issue raised before the coust of law that whether Section 30(2) and 56 of the ACT are violative
of a prisoners rights under Article 14,19, and 21.

Judgement:

Per Chandrachud, Fazl Ali, Singhal and Desai

 It is no more open for debate that convicts are not wholly denuded of their fundamental
rights. Prisoners are entitled to all constitutional rights. The Hands-off doctrine was
completely abolished.

11
(1978) 4 SCC 409.

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 The court has to strike a just balance between dehumanising prison atmosphere and the
preservation of internal order and discipline, the maintenance of institutional security
against escape and the rehabilitation of prisoners.
 Id section 30(2) of the Prison act enables the prison authorities to impose solitary
confinement on a prisoner under death sentence, not as a consequence of violation of
prison discipline but on the sole and solitary ground that the prisoner in one under death
sentence of death, the provision would offend Article 14,19, and 20. Further if by
imposing solitary confinement, there is total deprivation of camaraderie amongst co-
prisoners, comingling and talking, which would offend article 21.
 It is clear that section 30(2) does not empower the prison authorities to impose solitary
confinement in the sense in which that word is understood in the Punjab Jail Manual.
 Under Section 30(2) the expression ‘such prisoner shall be confined in a cell apart from
all other prisoners’ has a restricted meaning. Furthermore, the expression “prisoner under
sentence of death can only mean a prisoner whose sentence of death has become final and
conclusive and indefeasible which cannot be annulled and or voided by any judicial or
constitutional procedure. As the prisoner in not be kept in solitary confinement and the
custody under section 30(2) would preclude detention in solitary confinement, there is no
question of imposing a second punishment and hence the provision is not violative of
Article 20.
 The challenge under section 21 is not permissible as once the obnoxious element is
erased out, and then it cannot be said that the provision is arbitrary and violative of
section 30(2).
 Classification according to the sentence for the security purposes, is valid and therefore
section 30(2) does not violate Article 14.
 Restriction imposed under 30(2) is not violative of article 19.

Per Krishna J. (Concurring)

 The court cannot be oblivious to the fact that the treatment of the human beings which
offends human dignity, imposes avoidable torture and reduces the man to level of beast
would certainly be arbitrary and can be questioned under Article 19. Putting bar fetters
for an unusually long period, without due regard of the safety of the prisoner and the

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 security of the prison would certainly be not justified under Section 56. Particularly, it
would be so when medical opinion is that bar fetters should be removed. Since the bar
fetters of the petitioner have been removed, as a result of an interim order of the court the
question of re-imposing would not arise until and unless the requirements delineating
above and safeguards provided are observed.
● Unni Krishnan & Ors. v. State of Andhra Pradesh & Ors.,12 1993 SC As per the order from
Supreme Court ―Right against solitary confinement‖ is one of the rights that falls under Article
21 (Right to Life) of the Constitution. In this case, the Apex court declares that the right against
solitary confinement falls under the Right to Life in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.

● T.V.Vatheeswaran V. State of Tamil Nadu13, In T.V Vatheeswaran case, which the learned
Senior Counsel for the petitioner and the learned Amicus Shri Ram Jethmalani were placed, the
two-Judge Bench considered whether the appellant, who was convicted for the offence of murder
and was sentenced to death in January 1975 and was also kept in solitary confinement for 8 years
along with the commutation of the death sentence. The Court already faced the consideration of
the appellant's plea by making many observations.

PRISONER’S RIGHTS UNDER THE PRISONS ACT, 1894

Prisons Act, 1894 is the first legislation formed in India regarding the prison regulation in India.
This Act mainly focus on reformation of prisoners in connection with the rights given to the
prisoners. Following Sections of the Prisons Act, 1894 are related with the reformation of
prisoners:-

● Accommodation and sanitary conditions for prisoners,14

● Provision for the shelter and safe custody of the excess number of prisoners, who cannot be
safely kept in any prison,15

12
AIR 1993 SC 217.
13
 AIR 1983 SC 361.
14
The Prisons Act, 1894, s. 4
15
The Prisons Act, 1894, s. 7

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 ● Provisions relating to the medical examination of the prisoners by a well qualified Medical
Officer,16

● Provisions relating for the separation of prisoners like containing the female and male
prisoners, civil and criminal prisoners and convicted and undertrial prisoners,17

● Provisions relating to the treatment of undertrials, the civil prisoners, parole and temporary
release of prisoners.18

In 2016, the Parliament has passed the Prisons (Amendment) Bill, to amend the Prisons Act,
1894 with a motive to provide protection, rehabilitation and the welfare of the prisoners.

EFFECTS AND IMPACTS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

There are many effects due to the solitary confinement as a practice of punishment in the
judiciary. There are psychological illnesses and physical illness suffered by the prisoners under
the solitary confinement. The researches made by many researchers clearly stated that the
prisoners who are under solitary confinement has been affected by visual and hearing
hallucinations, Hypersensitivity to noise and touch, Insomnia and many other sleeping sickness,
Uncontrollable feelings of fear and death, increased rate of suicide by many deprivations,
dangerous perceptions and many traumatic diseases and disorders. In a research, Andersen
(2000) interviewed almost 133 prisoners under solitary confinement and 93 from the non solitary
confinement. He conducted surveys with many questionnaires and took the participation of the
prisoners. (Sastry 2005). The result shows that the mental illness is more with the people in the
solitary confinement as the punishment given for the crime. And the normal prisoners were not
that much mentally affected. Andersen in his study in 2000 first used the term disorder‘ which
means the problems including violent impulses, chronic tiredness, complete breakdown of the
self identity, sucidal tendencies and developing communication problems. These effects were all
taken into the researches for the efficient conclusion regard the solitary confinement.

16
The Prisons Act, 1894, s. 20(2)
17
The Prisons Act, 1894. s. 27
18
The Prisons Act, 1894, ss. 31, 35.

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CONCLUSION

A punishment is something which was given to the wrong doer to make them realise their
mistake and faults. Those punishments should be given in such a way which should make the
person not to do any wrong again. Solitary confinement should only be awarded only in rare and
extreme cases because solitary confinement may possibly puts the prisoners at extreme risk of
irreparable mental or other disorder which in some cases can be irreperable. Prisoner is also
human being and should be treated like one. There are many cases where mistreatment with the
prisoners leads to irrecoverable loss and damage. Article 21 of the Indian Constitution it is clear that
it is available not only for the common people but also to those people behind the prison and are many
other rights that are given to prisoners and it should be provided to them without any partiality. Priosners
should be awarded their basic human rights and Indian Judiciary regarding the protection of Human
Rights of prisoners indicates that the judiciary has been playing a role of saviour in situations
where the executive and legislature have failed to address the problems of the people many
landmark judgements improves the condition of the porisoners and Supreme Court specifically mentioned
that solitary confinemt can only be awarded in rare cases with humanly manner.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

1. PSA Pillai, Criminal Law, LexisNexis Publication, edn., 14th.

2. K. D Gaur, Indian Penal Code, LexisNexis Publication, edn., 6th.

ACTS

1. The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (45 of 1860)

2. The Prisioners Act, 1894

ARTICLE

1. Nidhi Suresh, ‘Prisoner Mirza Himayat Baig recounts solitary confinement inside an
anda cell’, The Caraven.

2. J.Sneha and K.Roja. ‘A study on solitary confinement as a punishment’, Volume 120

International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics.

WEBSITE

1. Meaning of Solitary Confinement, available at: https://dictionary.thelaw.com/solitary-

confinement

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