By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court will next week hear a plea by a murder convict seeking his release and compensation of Rs.75 lakh after he allegedly contacted AIDS and hepatitis C during his incarceration.
A bench of Chief Justice P.Sathasivam and Justice Ranjan Gogoi directed the listing of the matter Dec 17, before an appropriate bench after the same was mentioned before it by lawyer Manohar Singh Bakshi.
Princepal Singh alias Vicky, who was represented by Bakshi, has challenged the August 2013 order of Punjab and Haryana High Court rejecting his appeal against his conviction.
The petitioner is in jail since 2007 when he was accused of murder. The murder trial resulted in the acquittal of two, while two including Singh, were convicted and sentenced to life terms.
Singh, lodged in Amritsar’s central prison, was diagnosed as HIV+ Feb 4 and is undergoing treatment at Amritsar based Anti Retrinal Treatment Centre.
Bakshi has blamed the faulty and arbitrary system coupled with negligence in the jail for Singh contacting HIV and later hepatitis C. He said that under the jail rules it was incumbent upon the government to support the treatment of the HIV which he got in jail under going his sentence.
Describing the issue as serious, the petitioner has sought the issuance of guidelines for the treatment of such prisoners in other jails.Singh has contended that instead of taking care of him, the jail authorities were turning a deaf ear to the abuses and ill-treatment being inflicted on him by other jail inmates ever since his aliment became public.