Mumbai: The Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has pulled up prison authorities over the illegal detention of a Yerwada Central Prison inmate and has directed the Additional Director General (ADG) of Prisons to personally investigate the lapses.
The commission has given the ADG a final chance to file a detailed affidavit by May 15, fixing responsibility for the wrongful detention of Naresh Laxminarayan Maharana, who spent over two months in custody in 2023 despite having been granted bail.
Maharana, arrested in a cheating case, was convicted and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment by a Shivaji Nagar court. As he had already served his sentence, he was due for release on April 16, 2023. However, instead of being released, he was held as an undertrial in another case pending before the CBCID court in Egmore, Chennai.
Despite repeated requests by Yerwada prison authorities for police protection to transfer Maharana to Chennai, no support was provided by Tamil Nadu police. Eventually, a letter from Puzhal Central Prison in Chennai, received on June 22, 2023, confirmed that Maharana had been granted bail in the second case back in October 2019 and had no pending cases. He was released the same day—after over two months of illegal detention.
The SHRC, in its findings, noted that the Yerwada prison authorities failed to communicate or follow up adequately with their Chennai counterparts. “The failure to act on the bail order and the delay in correspondence amounts to a serious violation of the prisoner’s human rights,” the commission observed.
The SHRC directed the ADG (Prisons) to speak with the Tamil Nadu prison authorities, determine the cause of the communication lapse, and identify the officers responsible both in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The commission also instructed the ADG to submit a list of similar instances, if any, from the past year.
