90
trial is possible within three months. In accordance with the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, AI also made a number of specific recommendations regarding the improvement of prison conditions. AI asked the Indian government to investigate any allegations of torture which may come to its attention, and that an independent inquiry be made into the many prison incidents which result in the deaths of prisoners.
In its reaction to the report, the Indian government only seriously contested the numbers of political prisoners estimated by AI, maintaining that 1,609 pri- soners were held in West Bengal in connection with "extremist activities”. However, an investigation made by The Times of India on 30 September 1974 explained the difference in numbers by the fact that political prisoners, when arrested for alleged criminal offences, are not entitled to the special classification for political prisoners-provided for in the 1956 jail code rules.
The state of serious overcrowding in West Bengal prisons and the inadequate medical facilities was subsequently confirmed by the West Bengal Jail Code Revision Committee, set up by the present government in 1972, and which presented its report in February 1974. On page 32 of the report, the committee states: "The immediate problem that challenges the administrators is to devise effective means of reducing the jail population in the bigger interest of the community itself." The committee made its recommendations when the total prison population in West Bengal was 20,000. In September 1974, it had risen to 24,000.
The Times of India, the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express, in reacting to the Al report, were among the leading papers which requested in their editorials that prisoners detained under the Defence of India Rules and the Maintenance of Internal Security Act be brought to trial without further delay, and that an impartial inquiry be instituted to investigate the allegations of torture. Although AI has received reliable reports since then stating that the number of political prisoners in the state has been reduced to to some 8,000, because of the releases of
many "under trial" prisoners on bail, the Indian government has not-as far as AI is aware-taken positive steps to investigate any allegations made in the report.
Mr Ennals, while attending the AI Regional Conference in New Delhi (see chapter on Membership) met the Indian Home Secretary N.K. Mukarji, as well as other officials in the Home Ministry. During his discussions, Mr Ennals stressed the need for an independent investigation into prison conditions in West Bengal and also raised the issue of the continuation of preventive detention laws in force since the declaration of a state of emergency in 1971.
The most important of these laws, the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, has over the past year been used to detain political opponents, members of trade union movements, as well as participants in widespread disobedience movements led by Jayaprakash Narayan. Since detention of such prisoners usually is for only a short time, AI has not taken up their cases on an individual basis. The powers of preventive detention under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act were enlarged by a Presidential Order of 16 November 1974 in a move against "econ- omic offenders". The order also removed the right of appeal to the courts against illegal detention, as guaranteed in Part 3 of the Indian Constitution.
As far as AI can assess, these enlarged powers of arrest and detention have not