Ensure Prisoners Can Access Kiosks In Their Own Language: Madras High Court To State

The Madras High Court has recently directed the State to set up Kiosks inside prisons which will enable the prisoners to know the status of their cases. The court noted that even though as per an earlier direction of the court, such Kiosk was installed in Central Prison Puzhal, only Hindi and English language were available which the prisoners had difficulty in understanding.Justice Sunder Mohan thus directed the authorities to approach the National Informatics Centre to change the languages to English and Tamil so that the kiosk was useful in Tamil Nadu.Since the earlier direction of this Court to complete the exercise within four months have not been complied with, this Court deems it necessary to issue directions to the respondents to file a status report, within a period of two (2) weeks from the date of receipt of a copy of this order, as to the steps taken for installing KIOSK machines in all the prisons and the steps taken to include Tamil language for the purpose of enabling the prisoners to access the same.The court was hearing a case where a man had sought interim compensation for the illegal detention of his son for more than 8 months. The son Chokkar, who was the second accused in a murder case was convicted by the lower court. However, when the first accused went for appeal, the conviction was set aside and he was acquitted. The court noted that since Chokkar was also convicted on the same grounds, he was also entitled for acquittal though he had not preferred an appeal. The court thus had directed Chokkar to be released from jail.Chokkar, however, continued to be in police custody for another nine months before his father approached the high court. His counsel submitted that this happened because petitioner's son was not aware of the acquittal order. He made several recommendations so that such incidents do not happen in future. This included installation of Kiosks that support local language.Court said respondent-authorities are bound to install the KIOSK machines including Tamil language and no cause for the delay can be accepted. It also ordered interim compensation for Chokkar.Case Title: Rathinam v StateCitation: 2023 LiveLaw (Mad) 16 Case No: WP (MD).No.10524 of 2020Click here to read/download the judgment

Ensure Prisoners Can Access Kiosks In Their Own Language: Madras High Court To State

Upasana Sajeev

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