A team of 23 women parliamentarians belonging to different political parties visited the Byculla women jail and interacted with the inmates and officials there on Thursday, three weeks after the controversial death of a woman convict Manjula Shetye inside the prison.
The Parliamentary Empowerment of Women’s Committee, headed by Assam MP Bijoya Chakravorty, took stock of the situation at the women prison which came into sharp focus after Manjula ( 40) succumbed to injuries that she had suffered after she was allegedly beaten up by the jail staffers on June 23.
“As part of stock-taking, we spoke both the inmates and jail staffers. But, I do not want go into the details of our observations during the visit,” Nationalist Congress Party’s Rajya Sabha MP Vandana Chavan said.
The committee’s observations will figure in a national report on the status of women’s jails across the country which its members have been touring for the past nearly two years.
Apart from Chakravorty, the other MPs who were part of the team that visited the Byculla women jail included Supriya Sule (NCP), Raksha Khadse (BJP) and Muthuvel Karunanidhi Kanimozhi (DMK).
The Byculla women jail houses more than 350 women inmates and at least 25 children who stay with their jail inmate-mothers inside the prison, nearly 200 women prisoners.
The women parliamentarians’ visit to the Byculla women jail comes in the wake of the death of Manjula, a resident of Bhandup in north-east Mumbai who had earlier been serving life sentence in Pune’s Yerwada for the murder of her sister-in-law and was recently shifted to Byculla jail. She was declared dead upon her admission to the State-run JJ Hospital on June 23. A post-mortem conducted on Mahjula’s body revealed that she had died of “multiple contusions and pulmonary edema”.
Following Manjula’s death, six women jail staffers were booked for allegedly beating Manjula to death. Pending a enquiry, they were suspended for alleged dereliction of duty.
After the news of Manjula spread within the Byculla women jail which houses more than 350 women inmates and at least 25 children who stay with their jail inmate-mothers inside the prison, nearly 200 women prisoners climbed up the two-storey terrace of the jail building and staged a protest on June 24.
Meanwhile, a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Maharashtra State Commission for Women (MSCW) is investigating the circumstances leading to the death of inmate Manjula Shetye.