Box-34 Whenever a person with mental illness is facing trial, it would be desirable for the authorities to keep in mind the following Guidelines framed by the NHRC and approved by the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi in 2003: 1. All prisoners should have an opportunity of psychological or psychiatric counselling with a view to have an early detection and prevention of mental illness. 2. All central, district and sub-jails should have facilities for preliminary treatment of mental disorder. 3. All central and district prisons should have the services of a qualified psychiatrists, who is assisted by the psychologist and psychiatric social worker. 4. No mentally ill person, who is not accused of committing a crime, should be sent or kept in a prison. 5. State owes affirmative responsibility to an undertrial or convict who develops mental illness during trial or sentence. The responsibility is for in-house psychiatric treatment, as well as for psychiatric care through private hospitalization. 6. The period spent during psychiatric care and treatment should be counted towards the term of sentence, but the prisoner should continue to receive treatment even as a free person. 7. Mentally ill undertrial should be sent to nearest prison that has psychiatric facilities and his trial ought to be suspended till he is certified ‘fit to stand trial’ 8. In prison all the inmates suffering from mental illness should be kept in one barrack. 9. All the prisoners who have recovered from mental illness and found guilty for crime would be kept in barracks with normal inmates, but would be subjected to periodic checking by the prison psychiatrist. 10. In view of the State’s general responsibility for the mental and physical 51