Civil Liberties Imprisonment of the Mentally Challenged 3.69 The Commission has also taken a very serious note of the condition of mentally challenged persons wrongly languishing in prisons without proper medical care and attention. The Chairperson of the Commission, in a letter to the Chief Ministers (Annexure XI), expressed deep concern at the sad plight of such persons. He pointed out that the Mental Health Act, 1987, which came into force with effect fromIApril 1993, did not permit the lodging of mentally challenged persons in prisons, as this was a very insensitive and unbecoming manner of dealing with them. As they should be kept only in institutions for the mentally ill and provided proper treatment, the detention ofsuch persons in jails amounted to an egregious violation of human rights. The letter made it unambiguously clear that if officers of the Commission, duringjail inspections, found mentally challenged persons in jails, the Commission would award compensation to them, or to the members oftheir families, and would further direct the State Government to recover the compensation from the jail officers responsible for this lapse. He recommended that the ChiefMinisters issue directions to senior prison officers to inspect prisons regularly, in order to ensure that mentally challenged persons were not kept in jails under any circumstances. HUMAN RIGHTS AND ADMINISTRATION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE 3.70 The Commission has, in its preceding Reports, made specific proposals concerning tjje need to improve certain aspects of the administration of criminal justice in India. In the report for 1998-99, the Commission drew attention to the lack of efficiency in police investigation, certain problems bedeviling the administration of criminal justice in the Courts, and recommended a programme of action for speedy clearance of criminal cases. In particular, it proposed that: □ Strategies should be designed, on a district to district basis, for the control of arrears, having regard to the particular requirements and the pattern of criminal litigation in the district. □ The programme should be in the charge of High Courts, which will nominate a sitting Judge or a Committee ofJudges to be in-charge of the programme in the district. The Judge or the Committee, as the case may be, shall be advised and assisted by a computer expert in Court management matters. The programme must be funded by the State, by an adequate one-time monetary grant, sufficient to see the programme through. A generous measure of financial autonomy would be absolutely necessary for the Courts. The National Judicial Academy should be requested to develop these packages of programmes. □ The target must be that within a time-fi^e, say a period of three years, no Court in that district should have any criminal case pending for over eight months. For 37