Provide relief in cases of unnatural jail death, SC tells Centre, States: 

Provide relief in cases of unnatural jail death, SC tells Centre, States: 

Context

• The Supreme Court directed the Chief Justices of all High Courts to suo motu register petitions to identify the kin of prisoners who died unnatural deaths from 2012 and order the States to award them compensation.

What has the Bench observed?

• It is important for the Centre and State governments to realize that persons who suffer an unnatural death in a prison are also victims, sometimes of a crime and sometimes of negligence and apathy or both.
• There is no reason at all to exclude their kin from receiving compensation only because the victim is a criminal, the Bench observed.

What were the considerations earlier for compensation?

• Typically, the National and States Human Rights Commissions decide and award compensations in cases of custodial torture, deaths, etc.
• However, compliance by State governments is low as these commissions do not exercise any power of contempt.
• The States rather go for a long-drawn appeal in the high courts and later on in the Supreme Court, if necessary.

Why is this judgement significant?

• This judgment is significant as the high court will now directly award compensation and ensure compliance by the States.
• The Supreme Court referred to its judgment as a voice of the victims and an end to the silence of the dead.
• Human rights in a welfare state is not dependent on the status of the person, whether he is a criminal or a victim.
• The payment from the year 2012 was chosen because National Crimes Records Bureau has records of unnatural deaths from that year.
• The judgment came on a letter addressed to the apex court in 2013 by its former Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti on the deplorable conditions of 1382 prisons across the country.
• The court put the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development on a deadline of December 31, 2017, by which it had to formulate procedures for tabulating the number of children who suffered unnatural deaths in custody or in child care institutions and take remedial measures.