Prisoner no 165 in the new Mulahiza ward
By Sarfoora Zargar
Perhaps the starkest memory of prison for me has been of blood. Me walking through a blood stained medical room inside the mahila jail of Tihar haunts me till date. The jail had gone into a complete and total lockdown. It is ironical because the only lockdown I had heard about till now was the covid lockdown. And therefore, the sound alarms blaring to announce the lockdown in the jail seemed straight out of a prison breakout scene in a movie. We were hurriedly and rashly pushed into our cells and locked into them for an indefinite period. The fear of not knowing what is happening and what is going to happen is rather cold. It is chilling. More so for me because i was locked alone. My world limited to a rectangular opening with prison bars. Limited to a room full of light but still dark. Full of light because one is never allowed to switch off the lights in prison for total surveillance. In a way the prison uncovers you. Uncovers every part of you at every step. Exposing you- to the naked heat and bone-chilling cold. And the four walls of the prison cell are somehow unable to cover you. It is so uncovering that one might feel the need to cover oneself at every chance one gets. I was only let out of my cell for a customary medical checkup which in my case had become necessary for the jail. As I was let out of my cell by two female prison staff and led through an eerie emptiness, a strange kind of desolation, a deafening silence- towards the medical room, I covered my head and as much of my upper body as I could with my dupatta. This sight made the prison staff highly uncomfortable. What was the need to cover myself so much in a women’s jail which only had female staff?, they would ask multiple times. I had no reply, I did not know. I was driven by instinct.
As I moved towards the medical room, the silence turned into cries. The gory display of blood on the floor carried the cries to my ears, when in fact, there were none. It is not easy to walk through such violence, I felt my knees would buckle. At that moment, I felt I was living through the nightmare scenario described by Foucault. As part of my masters course in sociology I had written a paper on Discipline and Punish by Foucault. I wish I hadn’t. I was trying to unread it at that moment. Prisons don’t just punish the body but discipline the mind through constant surveillance and control, he said. The carceral state did not just seem like a distant theoretical concept, it became a living breathing monster. Sometimes not knowing is safer perhaps.
There were hushed whispers in the medical room. I saw an African women in a bed in the corner, her head bandaged. She was in a lot of pain. The medical room in the jail premises operates to ensure that inmates are kept alive. The concept of medical care is unknown to the institution. I tried to approach the woman but was rudely stopped by the guard. She held my arm and pushed me towards the medical room. ‘Jo kaam karne aayi ho wo karo aur niklo wapis, warna tumhe bi treatment de denge’. The CMO in the mahila jail was very kind. The medical care she could not provide inside the prison- she would compensate with her comforting words. We all are just cogs in the institution, bound to conform. The first thing I asked her was what happened. She looked me straight in the eyes and spoke after a while- ‘prison staff aur africans ke beech me jhadap ho gayi’. There was total chaos in the prison. I saw no familiar face. All staff had been changed overnight. Some inmates who work in the prison- managing the wards, distributing food etc were not locked and we only found out about the incident a few days later from them. Nobody was allowed to talk about it. It was as if it never happened.
The African women in jail were a force to reckon with. Well built, tall and outspoken- they refused to bend. They were very conscious about their rights as opposed to the Indian women in the prison who would do as told, without question. Maybe the same way they are used to operating in their households. They were sad and miserable- mostly abandoned by their families who couldn’t afford legal counsel. They survived on the meagre things that arrived through ‘mulaqat’ which was discontinued because of the pandemic. They hardly had any money sent to them. They were at the total mercy of the prison, the carceral state. The Africans on the other hand were a rowdy lot, nothing could diminish their spirit. They were a close knit group, always standing by each other. Most of them were in drug related cases- caged in a foreign land , with foreign food and people they couldn’t communicate with.
They stayed away from the indian inmates- for various reasons. While we were locked in at 5:30 or 6 pm, they stayed out till at least 7 pm citing the jail manual. They just wouldn’t budge. The jail staff avoided messing with them because of their temperamental nature. The African women would sing and dance, share things and take care of each other. One of the main activities that bound them together was braiding. They would braid each other’s hair day in and day out. It was an activity that kept them busy and kept them together, i feel. They find a strange kind of happiness and sense of belonging in braiding hair. They used hair extensions of various colors. The patterns were unbelievable. When i asked my best friend in prison- Mariam (also an African) to braid my hair, she said ‘you wouldnt be able to bear it’.
She told me it was a ritual that every child had to go through at a very young age so that they become used to it. Mariam would stand at my cell door for hours, talking to me whenever I was in solitary confinement. She had become my sanctuary. I have never met anybody like Mariam. She was so full of life. Indians they stopped from talking to me, but Africans they just couldnt! They were very curious about this ‘very dangerous young pregnant Kashmiri prisoner’ who was kept in solitary confinement. They had questions. And they offered camaraderie- all of us victims of a system that was the punishment in itself. I mostly survived on food from them- the jail food unbearable for me- more so because of my pregnancy. The ‘foreigner’ had special privileges for which Indians did not seem fit. Those affected by HIV had special diets- eggs, fruits, bread. They would share that with me.
When the pandemic came, courts issued orders to decongest jails. Many prisoners were getting interim covid bails, which foreigners were denied. The authorities cited ‘lack of local addresses and surety’ to deny them bail. But they demanded it on humanitarian grounds. They decided to sit on a hunger strike. The authorities tried to drag them into their cells when the jail is supposed to go into a lockdown by 7 pm. Its a hard deadline, except for a few convicted prisoners who manage the prison. The Africans refused. They wanted assurance that their bail will be considered. The jail staff decided to drag them to their cells at any cost. They resisted. Indiscriminate lathi charge happened. They were beaten to a pulp and put into an isolated ward without medical aid. The next day when the other Africans found their friends missing, they were agitated. They inquired about their whereabouts but were met with more hostility from the staff. They refused to backdown. The jail staff was always resentful towards them because they couldn’t control them but now an opportunity had presented itself. The lockdown alarms blared all through Tihar. Around 300 police women and men entered into the mahila jail and an indiscriminate lathi charge was unleashed on whoever was not in their cells or barracks. Heads were split open, arms and legs broken- so it is told. Then the jail authorities divided them and sent them to different wards inside the mahila jail- to break them up. Some were transferred to Mandoli women’s jail and some were transferred from mandoli to tihar. Mostly the Africans stayed together in barracks, they refused to scatter. The authorities managed to crush them.
It seemed to me at the time that my tryst with state violence wasn’t ending. I was getting exposed to more and more ugly facets of it. The Africans were broken into submission. Thankfully for me, Mariam was unharmed and remained in Tihar and continued to get me bread and butter and an abridged version of the jail tea early in the morning. Her smiling face every morning was my solace. Another solace was Devangana, Natasha and Gulfisha who I met for the first time in jail. Ironical because we are charged with conspiring to execute riots in the north east delhi!
Devangana, Natasha and Gulfisha were kept in the barracks. Gulfisha in a separate barrack than Natasha and Devangana. While human company gave them little bit of solace in the barracks, they would often try to talk to me from their barracks. Their barrack was opposite to me across a yard. If we shouted at the top of our voices, we could exchange a few words. At least we knew, we were alive. I can say this with confident that if it wasn’t for the Quran and the prayer mat that was sent to me by Asiya Andrabi, I cannot imagine how i would have survived those lonely cruel hours. My faith strengthened me and kept my hope alive in those hours of weakened resilience that came with a rush off and on. It gave me patience when i couldn’t muster any. The clocks tick extra slow inside the prison. You are frozen in time.
Pinjratod emerged as a movement against women hostel curfews. It popularised the ‘break the cages’ slogan. We often expressed wonder at how similar the mahila jail was to the women’s hostels. Fighting the oppressive systems that curtailed our freedoms, we had landed in the ultimate cage. We found comfort in these conversations. One day, they returned from a visit to the jail office. They seemed very angry and perplexed. Apparently, the jail staff had criticised and shamed them for wearing clothes that exposed too much and not carrying a dupatta! Control over women’s bodies is the ultimate weapon of repression unleashed by a vengent carceral state on dissenting women.