Karnataka High Court orders report on man jailed without trial for 21 years

Two lawyers took up the case of the prisoner whose case file went missing and was marked as "disposed of" online.

The Karnataka High Court Thursday directed the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority (KSLSA) to depute a responsible officer and submit a report regarding the legal and medical assistance provided to V Srinivasa, an undertrial prisoner who has remained in prison for 21 years without a trial.

Justice C M Poonacha stated, “We are not treating this as adversarial but want to see what can be done for him.” The court ordered the member secretary of the KSLSA to depute an officer to visit the Central Prison, Bengaluru, assess the situation, and place on record the assistance extended to the prisoner before the next hearing on October 7.

Srinivasa, a mentally ill undertrial prisoner, was arrested in 2005 by the Kolar rural police for allegedly killing his wife. After the trial court denied his initial bail application, he has remained in custody ever since without undergoing a full criminal trial.

Prison authorities first reported Srinivasa’s declining mental state during early trial court proceedings in 2005. Following an evaluation from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), the trial court ruled on September 3, 2015, that Srinivasa was of unsound mind and incapable of defending himself or standing trial.

The trial court stayed all further proceedings and directed Srinivasa’s transfer to either the psychiatric ward of the Central Prison, Bengaluru, or the mental hospital in Dharwad, ordering periodic mental health status reports to be filed.

The September 2015 order remains the final record entry in the case, even though the official e-courts portal currently marks the case status as “disposed of”.

During Thursday’s hearing, the government advocate submitted medical documents to the High Court detailing the psychiatric care provided to Srinivasa within the Bengaluru prison ward.

The chief superintendent of the prison stated in his memo: “Upon evaluation, the patient exhibits symptoms such as irrelevant speech, excessive self-praise, social withdrawal, talking to oneself, and poor self-care. Serial mental status evaluations revealed inconsistent and incoherent speech, delusions of grandiosity, hallucinatory behavior, impaired judgment, and a lack of insight.”

The prison memo stated that he has treatment-resistant schizoaffective disorder, a complex mental health condition where psychotic and mood symptoms persist despite medications. It said that he remains symptomatic and is not fit to stand trial.

Meanwhile, Advocates Vikram Raj A and Ashwin Joyston Kutinha, who took up Srinivasa’s case voluntarily and free of charge, told the bench they had difficulty obtaining case documents. In August, the Principal District and Sessions Judge in Kolar returned their application seeking certified copies of the case records, noting that the physical file had not been retrieved from the central record room.