Delhi Court worried over state of mental asylums

A Delhi court, while expressing grave concern over the pathetic condition of mental asylums, observed that institutions like IHBAS, Nari Niketan and Nirmal Chhaya were desperate to shed their burden by transferring mental health patients amongst each other or to other institutions. The court said the lives of mental health patients were at risk because of administrative and departmental difficulties.

Metropolitan magistrate Abhilash Malhotra made the observation while hearing arguments on a plea filed by one short-stay home seeking to transfer one mentally-challenged patient to the sister of a destitute person.

The court said short-stay homes like IHBAS, Nari Niketan and Nirmal Chhaya did not have appropriate facilities for the stay of mental health patients. “In these circumstances, the welfare of mental health patients, their children in the case of pregnant women, further upbringing of their kids and efforts to trace their family get badly dented and are put on the back-burner,” the court noted.

The plea had said the short-stay home (asylum) for women in distress was already housing 80 residents beyond their full capacity of 50 residents and, on this ground, was seeking the transfer of a woman mental health patient.

The woman was found abandoned in the Kashmere Gate area. They had pleaded that she be transferred to another short-stay home, Shanti Dham but it, too, denied the woman admission, saying it was housing more patients than its capacity.

The court has now summoned the director of the Delhi government’s Department of Social Welfare, the secretary to the Delhi Commission for Women, and two superintendents of short-stay homes to appear before it with a solution to the problem on the next date of hearing.

The court has also sent a copy of its order to the office of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Earlier, the Department of Social Welfare had told the court in its status report that the government was working on the idea of building five short-stay homes.

The matter was put up for consideration before the chief minister and comments were called for from IHBAS for running five halfway homes.

The IHBAS’ response was is awaited.