DHAKA: Twelve-year-old Bangladeshi Akkalesh has problems sleeping, often wakes up at night shivering and regularly stares blankly into space without emotion. Life has not been the same since his brief stint in an overcrowded jail in Dhaka, the capital.
The Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association helped Akkalesh regain his freedom and placed him in an orphanage, where he should have been. Anisa Akhtar, superintendent at the orphanage, called Prasanti, says the boy is haunted by painful memories of a few months in prison, huddled in a tiny cell with several others and subjected to physical and mental torture.
“I was brought to this home from the jail recently,” Akkalesh said. “Police picked me up from a Dhaka street as a crime suspect and sent me to the jail where I was chained.
“My wrists were chained, my feet were chained and they even put a chain around my waist,” he added. Akkalesh came here from a poor village in the north in search of food and a menial job.
Lawyers and former inmates say residents are often treated harshly in Bangladesh’s 65 jails, which bulge with prisoners. Over the past two decades, about 10,000 people, mostly innocent children and women inmates, have been given legal aid by the women lawyers’ association and plucked out of appalling prison conditions to rejoin society.
Many things have changed since Bangladesh became independent, but not the law. Bangladesh won independence in and a colonial hangover still lingers in some institutions. Lawyers say Bangladesh still pursues some laws based on a 19th century English penal system that is forcing thousands of people to languish behind the bars for long periods.
The Bangladeshi penal system sets no limit for settling cases be they for murder or petty theft. Inmates can be jailed for years if their cases are not settled. Corrupt police and legal officials often exploit the situation, causing thousands of people to be detained in jails for long periods without trial, lawyers say.
Prison officials say Bangladeshi jails are crammed and blame the overcrowding on factors like trial delays, rising crimes and indiscriminate police arrests. Many inmates were arrested under a 1974 Special Powers Act that empowers police to detain suspects for up to 90 days without being formally charged.
This city’s central jail, with a capacity of 2,500, now houses 10,000 prisoners. Many prisoners suffer from malnutrition, stomach ailments and skin diseases. Prisoners fight over inadequate supplies of food, and stage revolts over poor living conditions.—Reuters