prison for prisoners

Prison for prisoners

The police outpost is just outside the gates to the mental hospital. This makes it very convenient to report missing sedated doped patients who have wandered off while their caretakers slept or went to the toilet. (Here the psychiatrists believe in an open system and do not lock up the patients). It also means that morning and evening, you can find them wandering around the medical college campus.

One morning at 4:45 am, I was running with my black Labrador in moonlit darkness near the mental hospital when a group of men charged at me. The front runner was an unshaven unkempt adult male totally unclothed, as naked as the day he was born. He was being pursued by a khakhi clad lathi wielding group with a powerful torch. The rear was brought up by a potbellied inspector on a microscopic TVS bike, his paunch jiggling up and down like a well set gelatin mould.

The naked man saw the dog.
“Help me! Save me” he shouted.
I ran faster towards him to do the needful.
“Help!” he turned around and ran back to the khakhi crowd.
They grabbed him, biffed him one over the ear for good measure and led him away.
The potbellied inspector, quite exhausted by his bike ride, paused resting on the handlebars.

“Excuse me” I said “Was that a mental patient?”
“Oh no” he said, “that was a man arrested for murder. Land dispute. He just hacked his brother to death.”
“What happened to his clothes?”
“Madam” he said, “you don’t understand these things. In the police station we only have a small lock up. It is barely big enough for your dog.’’
“So?” I asked.
“Today we had 10 arrests in this murder case. So we locked up their clothes instead.”
“And the prisoners?’’
“Madam, naked men will not run out on to the road. I figured this out some time ago. Besides, we will transfer them in the morning”.
“What about women?” I asked curiously.
“We hardly ever arrest women. If we do we just tie them to a chair. With their own clothes.”
An effective efficient travesty of human rights!
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