By IANS
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Friday asked the city police why it was sending 31 more people, nabbed for minor offences, to an already overcrowded Tihar Jail, despite knowing that several inmates had died last week due to the summer heat.
A division bench headed by Justice Pradeep Nandrajog asked the Delhi police commissioner to state the reasons in an affidavit by July 3, the next date of hearing.
The 31 were arrested on charges of breach of peace in a locality.
Last week, the high court had directed the Tihar jail authorities to release 600 inmates who had been arrested for minor offences and were not able to provide personal surety for bail.
The court had issued the direction after going through the report of a three-member committee appointed by it on a string of deaths in the jail. The committee pointed out that the recent deaths were due to "overcrowding and lack of proper facilities".
The court directed the district magistrate to complete the hearing of such cases in six months.
While reprimanding the jail authorities, the court had said fans and coolers should have been fixed in the jail before the onset of summer.
The three-member committee had submitted a report on the cause of the deaths of six inmates and a jail warden in the last fortnight.
Shalek Chand Jain, a social worker, alleged in a public suit that deaths in Asia's largest jail have become routine. "In the past one week at least six people died due to excessive heat," said the petition filed by counsel Sugriv Dubey.