The Union home ministry has amended the prison manual rules to prohibit discrimination and the segregation of prisoners on the basis of caste.

In a letter to chief secretaries of states and Union Territories on Monday, the ministry said that the 2016 Model Prison Manual and the 2023 Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act had been amended to tackle discrimination against prisoners.

The ministry had prepared the model manual in January 2016 to ensure uniformity in the basic principles that govern prisons. The model Act was introduced in May 2023 to replace the pre-Independence era laws that governed the administration of prison.

As prisons are in the state list, their administration and management are the responsibility of the states and the Union Territories.

The changes on Monday came more than two months after the Supreme Court on October 3 struck down the prison manual rules, saying that they promoted caste discrimination in jails by allocating prisoners from oppressed communities to carry out menial jobs in jails.

The October 3 order came on a petition filed by journalist Sukanya Shantha, following her investigative reporting series in The Wire on caste-based discrimination and segregation in jails. The petition highlighted that prison manuals in several states promote such discrimination.

The reporting found that the division of labour was being determined on the “‘purity-impurity’ scale, with the higher castes handling only work that is considered ‘pure’ and those lower in the caste grid being left to carry out the ‘impure’ jobs”.

In its October ruling, a bench of DY Chandrachud, the chief justice at the time, and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said that discrimination in prisons would not be tolerated and initiated a suo motu case to monitor the matter.

As per the letter on Monday, the new additions to the Model Prison Manual said that prison authorities would have to strictly ensure that there was no discrimination, classification and the segregation of prisoners based on their caste.

There must be “no discrimination of prisoners in allotment of any duty or work in prisons on the basis of their caste”, the ministry said.

A new heading, “Prohibition of caste-based discrimination in Prisons and Correctional Institutions”, was also included as Section 55(A) in the “miscellaneous” part of the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act.

The 2013 Provisions of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act will also have a “binding effect even in prisons and correctional institutions”, the ministry said in the letter. The Act prohibits the employment of manual scavengers and provides for their rehabilitation.

The ministry also barred manual scavenging or hazardous cleaning of a sewer or a septic tank inside prisons.

Directives on ‘habitual offenders’

The letter on Monday said that the existing definition of a habitual offender in the Model Prison Manual and the Model Prisons and Correctional Services Act had been replaced since several states and Union Territories had not enacted the Habitual Offenders Act in their jurisdictions.

The new definition was introduced after examining the definition in the available Habitual Offenders Acts of several states, it added.

The ministry said that a habitual offender will now mean a person who, during any continuous period of five years, has been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for more than two times for offences committed on different occasions “and not constituting parts of same transaction”, with the sentence not having been reversed.

In the October order, the Supreme Court said that the references to habitual offenders in state prison manuals were unconstitutional and must align with the legislation on habitual offenders.

The Habitual Offenders Act is a law that sentences a person to an additional term of imprisonment or life imprisonment if they have already been convicted of certain crimes a certain number of times. Several states, including Karnataka, Gujarat, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, have enacted such a legislation.