in prison administration Ayodhya Tried to rehabilitate a 98-year-old inmate who would otherwise have been condemned to Brooks’ fate.
Bail approved in August 2022, Ram Surat98, was not released until someone came forward to furnish a surety bond of Rs 11,500 as mandated by the court.
What worried the jail authorities the most was the fact that no one was going to meet the old man.
His story is a continuing saga of misfortune. Rama Surat took sanyasa when he was middle-aged, after which he was abandoned by his family, all of whom either died or moved in later years. He was left all alone in his native village, Chaudharypurin Ayodhya district.
He used to go from house to house begging for food and alms and survived on the donations of the people.
In March 2016, when Ram Surat was 92, misfortune befell him in a street in the village where he was on a regular begging tour. A family misunderstood his proposal and lodged a complaint with the police, mistaking him for a thief.
He was booked for house-trespass and voluntarily causing hurt under the Indian Penal Code, arrested and lodged in the district jail.
A charge sheet was filed in 2017, following which he was convicted in November 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison.
The sentence was pronounced by the lower court and the sessions court of the district had ordered bail for Ram Surat on August 8, 2022, but it could not be produced as no relative or family member could deposit the surety of Rs 11,500. Came.
jail superintendent Shashikant Mishra Recently came to know about his plight. He then joined an NGO which deposited the bail bond and the jailer got fresh bail orders from the court for the release of the old man.
Mishra said, “On January 7, we sent a letter to the court requesting to re-send the order for the release of Ram Surat, taking prompt cognizance, the order for the release of the said prisoner was sent to us on time.”
Mishra said, “I roped in Shailendra Mohan Mishra, who runs an NGO and is also associated with the BJP, who immediately filled his sureties. We were able to collect Rs 11,500 for his safe release.”
That was not the end.
None of Ram Surat’s family members had survived and people from far away refused to take him in.
The jail superintendent then brought him back to the city of Ayodhya and made arrangements for his stay in an ashram.
Ram is a disciple of Mahant Kaushal Kishore Das of Surat Ayodhya, who took him in. “I have no words to describe what the jail superintendent has done for me,” the old man told reporters in Ayodhya.
Mishra said that due to his efforts, about 500 such prisoners have been released from the jails of Agra and Faizabad during his tenure in the last seven years.