The report, filed by apex court amicus curiae advocate Gaurav Agarwal, further says that in some cases the women prisoners became pregnant when they had gone out on parole.

Titled “Application for directions on behalf of amicus curiae”, the report says the Additional Director General (ADG) and the Inspector General (IG), West Bengal Correctional Services, informed Agarwal in this regard.

Of the 62 women in question, 11 women were deported to Bangladesh along with their children, it says. In ‘Annexure-A4’ (pages 13 to 19), the report shares details of these women inmates.

Six women “expressed about pregnancy during the first health screening”, 20 “detected on admission screening and confirmed after test”, 32 were “received with pregnancy”, while four women were “received with pregnancy after coming back from parole”, the report reads.

According to the list, 20 cases were reported from the Dumdum central correctional home, six from Jalpaiguri central correctional home, five from the Alipore women correctional home, five each from the Krishnanagar district correctional home and the Midnapore central correctional home, four from the Berhampore central correctional home, three cases each from the Burdwan central correctional home, Balurghat central correctional home and the Cooch Behar district correctional home, two each from the Bankura district correctional home and the district correctional home in Raiganj, and one case each from the Hooghly district correctional home, Suri district correctional home, Siliguri special correctional home and the Jhargram special correctional home.

“There is the need for a complete security audit of women’s jails and barracks across the country. Also, there is the need to examine medical facilities in women’s jails to ensure that proper examinations of women are conducted at the time of being lodged and at regular intervals,” the report says.

“The senior-most woman judicial officer in the district may be requested to assess the available security measures in the women’s jails/barracks,” it added.

The amicus curiae also suggested the need for checking the availability of sufficient women personnel for the purposes of security and welfare of women prisoners and their regular health check-ups.

On February 8, submissions were made by an amicus curiae in a writ petition before a division bench of the Calcutta High Court on inhuman conditions in prisons, highlighting that women inmates were getting pregnant in different jails of West Bengal.

Later, the Supreme Court took up the matter and decided to examine the issue of women’s condition in jails on a pan-India basis.