Seeman is not being held in isolation

The state prison authorities have denied that film director Seeman was being kept in solitary confinement in the Central Prison at Vellore.



Seeman was arrested last week for allegedly making an inflammatory speech threatening to target Sinhalese students in Tamil Nadu. He made the speech while leading a protest against the killing of a Tamil fisherman, allegedly by Sri Lankan Navy personnel. On July 17, he was slapped with the National Security Act (NSA).
He had filed a habeas corpus petition in the Madras high court, stating that he had been put up in a block which was not in use for about two decades and that he was staying alone there. He also claimed that authorities had not given him A' class facilities, despite a specific order from the magistrate.
In a status report filed before a division bench comprising Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice KK Sasidharan on Tuesday, the superintendent (incharge) of the prison said there were 15 other remand prisoners in the O F Yard inside the prison campus.
The report also submitted that as per the magistrate's order, Seeman had been given A' class facility, which entitles him to comforts such as newspaper, cot, bed, chair and a table. The O F Yard is a sub-jail within the prison campus and it has nine rooms, big enough to accommodate 50 people each, it said, adding that at the time of remand of Seeman there were 15 other remand prisoners in the Yard.
The bench has asked the authorities to submit these details in an affidavit format, and has asked counsel for Seeman too to file their reply.