Shift Dutch man from Srinagar jail to Delhi hospital, orders SC

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 21

The Supreme Court has directed the Jammu and Kashmir administration to transfer a Dutch national, a patient of paranoid schizophrenia, from the Central Prison, Srinagar, to the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, New Delhi, for specialised care.

The order came last week after advocate Rohan Garg submitted on behalf of petitioner Richard De Wit (53) that the accused had been in jail for a decade since his arrest in April 2013 in Srinagar in a murder case. His medical condition was deteriorating as no proper medical treatment for the disease was available in the Srinagar jail, Garg told a Bench led by Justice V Ramasubramanian (since retired).

The Bench, however, said: “It (his shifting from the Srinagar jail to the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences) is on a condition that after the psychological condition of the petitioner/detenue improves, he shall be shifted to the Central Prison, Srinagar.”

“It is made clear that the period during which he receives treatment at the special care centre, will be part of the custody and hence, he will not be permitted to go out freely. The mother (Mrs Eleanor Catharina de Boer – de Wit) of the petitioner/detenue is permitted to visit him at the specialised care centre,” it ordered on May 15.

The counsel for the J&K administration submitted that it had no objection to the petitioner being shifted to any one of them on the condition that he returned after his condition improved.

The top court had last month issued a notice to the J&K administration on the Dutch national's seeking direction to the authorities to provide him proper medical treatment for paranoid schizophrenia at a specialised hospital.

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