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PURGING CASTE-BASED DISCRIMINATION IN STATES' JAIL MANUALS
The New Indian Express
|October 08, 2024
ALMOST 75 years after the Constitution eliminated caste-based discrimination, the scourge continues to be prevalent in some parts where a two-tumbler system is in vogue and access to temples and cremation sites is denied.
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State governments are alive to the situation and are actively combating it. What, however, was shockingly sanctified by the executive was the discrimination explicitly written into the jail manuals of as many as 10 states in the country. The problematic portions broadly are on the division of manual labour, segregation of barracks and labelling people as habitual offenders. For example, one manual specified that sweepers shall be chosen from the 'Mehtar or Hari caste' inmates. The Supreme Court last week quashed such offensive provisions as unconstitutional. The court said the right to live with dignity extends even to the incarcerated, and rued that criminal laws
This story is from the October 08, 2024 edition of The New Indian Express.
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