Woman prisoner receives education in jail, resurrects life

If she’d had her way, Sandhya Prakash Jadhav would’ve “run for elections and served the people”. But not all wishes in life, says the 49-year-old, come true.

Looking behind, the mother-of-three had not desired the script of life the way it unfolded. Looking ahead: her new innings has only just begun.

On Monday, Sandhya began her job as clerk at the Nagpur divisional office of the Yeshwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, from where she acquired a bachelor’s degree in arts while serving a seven-year-rigorous-imprisonment term in Nagpur central jail. In 1990, she was convicted for a homicide.

“I did not dream of such a turn in my life,” a happy-sounding Sandhya said. She’ll draw a monthly salary of Rs7,000 for monitoring incoming and out-going dispatches. On Tuesday, she looked composed, eager to get on with her life.

Sandhya is the first woman prisoner to finish her graduation while still serving her sentence, the university’s divisional director, Arvind Bodre, said. She did her BA in Sociology and Marathi with 68% marks. She had to first learn Marathi.

She got the job as per the promise made by the university’s acting vice-chancellor Dr Sudhir Gavane during the graduation ceremony in the central jail premises on November 4. The university specially created this post for her, Bondre said.

The university has also promised to employ another prisoner-student Ravindra Gajbhiye, whose sentence is to end shortly.

At least 40 prisoners serving sentences in various crimes in the different prisons of the state graduated this year – half of them are at the Nagpur central jail. The Open University runs its centers in all the prisons across the state.

It’ll send a message, said Bondre. “We want to practice what we preach – if we are asking society to give ex-prisoners a chance, we have to begin it here.”

Sandhya did not first take the promise seriously until she got the job offer letter. “But now that I sit here, it’s like a dream.”

For a woman who dropped out of school after eighth standard, the initial script was simple: marry a man chosen by her parents in Nagpur. She was 19 then.

But soon, her life was to take a sad turn. “My husband would torture me,” she said, “but I stayed with him because of my good in-laws.” It went on for five to six years until she could not take his beating any more, she said. She divorced him and went back to her parents with her three children – eldest Suraj is now 29 and runs a paan shop that she set up in 1983, second son Banti, 27, is a handicap, and daughter Kiran is 22. Her father could not support her so she had to separate.

Sandhya lived in a rented room alone with her children and eked her living from a paan, tea and snacks stall in a bustling commercial area of Sadar in North Nagpur. “It wasn’t easy for a single woman to run a paan shop, but I did it.” That’s where she met Prakash Jadhav, her second husband who runs an auto-rickshaw. The problem, she said, was their landlord who had bad intentions that eventually catapulted her life into a tumultuous phase that lasted 19 years.

“I did what I did in my self defence,” said Sandhya, “I have no remorse.”

Eight to nine persons aided by her landlord, she recalled, came to her house that fateful night in 1990 when her husband was not at home.

“Their intention was to rape me,” she said with a sudden rush of anger. Even as they tried molesting her, she said she stabbed one of them to death. The others fled.

The sessions court awarded her life imprisonment. Later, the high court upheld the sentence in 1995, but the Supreme Court in 2005 gave her relief and reduced her prison term to seven years. “By then, I had already served three years in prison in two installments – first in 1990 and later in 1995.”

By 2005, she said, the prison conditions had undergone a sea change. “The jail had no education facilities when I first went in,” she said. “Now, things are far better – a prisoner can get education,” she said. In between, out on bail, she would run her stalls to tend to her family and finance her case.

Her parents and second husband, she said, stood firmly by her.

Helped by other inmates and social workers and teachers, Sandhya first learnt Marathi, then enrolled herself for a BA course after passing the Open University’s mandatory preliminary examination. She reformed her checkered life by taking lessons in both Sociology and Marathi language. “I think it was all for good.”

Things would have been different, she said, had she got education early on. “But growing in good company is also important,” she said.

Busy giving interviews to media persons at her office, Sandhya said, “Maine bahut duniya dekhi hai bhaiyya (I’ve seen it all, brother).” What did she like most in her prison studies? “Gandhiji,” she said after a thought. “His ahimsa.”