“PUNITIVE ACTIONS AGAINST PRISONERS ARE SEEN AS A DEMONSTRATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL”
Anand Teltumbde
In The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, the scholar and activist Anand Teltumbde writes about his incarceration in Taloja Central Prison. He spent 31 months in prison, as an undertrial in what is broadly termed the Bhima Koregaon case, before being released on bail in November 2022. In this excerpt from the book, he reflects on the prison’s surveillance system, its bureaucracy and various systemic failures, including suspensions of phone facilities and rejections of applications from prisoners. “Being cut off from the outside world for four weeks during the pandemic—when the entire nation was gripped by anxiety—was a harrowing experience,” he writes. “We wanted to approach the court, but how could we do so without any means of communication?”
One day during the bandi, the jail superintendent, accompanied by his deputy, came rushing to my cell. He was in civilian clothes and wearing slippers—a clear sign that something serious had happened. As he reached my cell, he thrust his cell phone towards me, speaking incoherently and demanding to know what it was about.
It took me a moment to grasp what he was referring to. The screen displayed a message from my wife that had been shared on social media. It read: Today, I spoke with Anand on a video call. The prison’s surveillance system was evidently tracking not just us but also our families. The message had instantly made its way up and down the chain of command and now had the superintendent standing in front of me, visibly alarmed. His superiors had evidently demanded an explanation for how a video call could have been made from the prison when it was strictly prohibited.
Those were the pandemic days, and communication with families was rigidly controlled. We anxiously waited for our turn, which could take anywhere from a week to two weeks—entirely due to the administration’s mismanagement. I firmly denied that I had had a video call with my wife. I suggested that my wife might have misspelled “audio” as “video” in her message. I further clarified that, in any case, we prisoners had no control over initiating calls. It was the prison staff who connected us to our registered contact numbers and handed us the phone. I suggested he inquire with his own staff if there had been any violation. After all, the staff maintained a register, and it would clearly show what type of call it was.
Unable to counter these points, the superintendent asked me to accompany him to the mulaqat room. There, he reviewed the register and found that the call was indeed recorded as an “audio” call. Next, he got my wife on a call, switched the speaker on, and asked me to question her about the message she had put up on social media.
The situation turned almost comic. I asked her about the message, and she explained that she had shared it on a group and didn’t know how it ended up on social media. She couldn’t even recall what she had written and kept asking me what the issue was. When I specifically asked her, she categorically confirmed that she was referring to an audio call. The concerned guard also confirmed the same.
At this point I was visibly annoyed by the absurdity of the whole exercise. I asked the superintendent if he was finally satisfied or if there was anything else left to investigate. Embarrassed in front of his staff, he mumbled something and instructed the guard to escort me back to my cell. However, the matter didn’t end there. Without informing us, he passed an order suspending the phone facility of the entire BK-accused for a month. This is precisely how the bureaucracy operates. When questioned by his superiors about the supposed violation, instead of reporting his findings—that it was not a video call, or that if it had been, it was the staff’s mistake—he chose the safer route. By suspending our mulaqats, he would appear “competent” to his bosses, unmindful of the fact that his act would establish the incompetence of both.
Punitive actions against prisoners are seen as a demonstration of administrative control, while holding staff accountable is often viewed as undermining the system. For the superintendent, punishing prisoners is always the safer option, as we are unlikely to raise our voice against the prison authorities. Even if we do, by the time a court takes up the matter the issue will already have lost its relevance.
It was only after ten days, when our weekly turn for a phone call came and we were not taken to the mulaqat room, that we realised our phone facility had been suspended. I lodged a written protest with the superintendent, but my protest letter was returned through the jailer without any acknowledgement. My co-accused also likely protested this irrational and high-handed decision, but to no avail. Rejecting applications from prisoners is common practice in jail, leaving us without any documentary evidence to support our case.
Being cut off from the outside world for four weeks during the pandemic—when the entire nation was gripped by anxiety—was a harrowing experience. We wanted to approach the court, but how could we do so without any means of communication? Both we and our families endured anxious moments in the absence of any contact. Even vakil mulaqats—meetings with lawyers—were erratic and unreliable. For the first time I felt utterly helpless, facing the superintendent’s blatant high-handedness with no remedy in sight. If this was the situation for people like us, I could only imagine the plight of the majority of common prisoners.
Somehow, I managed to send a message to my lawyers, asking them to take the matter to court urgently. They filed a complaint, but the legal process moved at its usual glacial pace. By the time the court could address the issue, the one-month suspension period had already ended and our mulaqats resumed. This is typical of the legal system—complaints often die a silent death, rendered infructuous by procedural delays. How many such complaints have gone unresolved due to the courts’ unresponsiveness to prisoners’ issues is anyone’s guess.
This systemic failure is one of the primary causes of lawlessness in prisons. Even when the issue resolves itself with time, the illegality that caused it remains unaddressed. This emboldens perpetrators to act with impunity, knowing there will be no consequences. Unless state functionaries are held accountable for their wilful violations of the law, there can be no rule of law—nor, by extension, any true democracy.
Making a complaint against jail authorities’ blatant violations of the law is almost always an exercise in frustration. Courts typically require a response from the respondents, which is reasonable in principle. However, in urgent matters courts could expedite the process by demanding a response by mail within a day or two, or by summoning the jail superintendent or a representative to appear in court immediately. Instead, the usual practice is to set a hearing for a fortnight later, only to find that no response has been submitted. A reminder is then sent, often met with further delay. By the time the matter is finally heard—if it even reaches that stage—the issue has often lost its relevance.
This is precisely what happened with the one-month suspension of our mulaqats. In cases where the issue persists, such as denial of mosquito nets, courts often side with the prison authorities, accepting their arguments—usually framed around “security concerns”—ignoring the prisoners’ constitutional right to life. There is no recognition of the vast asymmetry of resources between the state and the individual. While the state can commit illegal acts and defend them all the way to the Supreme Court with virtually unlimited resources, an aggrieved citizen is likely to be worn out mid-course.
These systemic flaws have emboldened state functionaries to act with impunity. And tragically, it is the judiciary itself that bears significant responsibility for the erosion of accountability in the state’s dealings with its citizens.
This is an edited excerpt from Anand Teltumbde’s The Cell and the Soul: A Prison Memoir, published with permission from Bloomsbury India.
Anand Teltumbde is a scholar, writer and activist. He has written over thirty books, many of which have been translated into several Indian languages.
https://caravanmagazine.in/law-and-order/cell-and-the-soul-prison-memoir-anand-teltumbde. Please consider subscribing to and supporting Caravan.
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