98-year-old man released from Ayodhya jail to mixed reactions

A frail 98-year-old, clad in a dhoti and kurta and covered under a blanket emerged from the Ayodhya jail on Monday morning, his eyes searching for family members. However, nobody was there to receive him. Jail superintendent Shashikant Misra asked the elder where he would like to go.

The just-released inmate said he would like to go to his mandir, later revealed to be the Raghunath Chavani. It was not immediately clear whether he had served as a priest there.

On Monday morning what caught the attention of netizens was a video of the jail superintendent calling out to his son and getting into his car to drop off Ram Surat Mishra. That gesture won huge praise as generally policemen are shown mostly in poor light.

Not all comments on the video posted by the Director General of Prisons, UP, were positive. One user said the jail had released him fearing that he would die inside, while another said it was a shame that while notorious criminals roamed free, a 98-year old was in jail. Another user said the government should take care of him as his family did not appear to be bothered. Humanity was still alive and the jail superintended was a living example of that, said a user.

On January 7, the superintendent of the district jail in Ayodhya wrote to the chief judicial magistrate in Faizabad detailing that Ram Surat Mishra, the son of Ram Jas Mishra, a resident of Chaudhripur had completed his term of imprisonment on November 23, 2019. Mishra had been serving a five-year sentence under Sections 452, 323 and 352 of the Indian Penal Code. These sections relate to house trespass with the intention to hurt; voluntarily causing hurt and use of criminal force on provocation respectively.

Mishra’s release order had been sent on August 8, 2022. However, he had been given a 90-day parole under Covid-19 provisions on May 20, 2021. After parole, he returned to prison on October 10, 2022. The letter had requested the court to issue a fresh release order for the inmate.