Mumbai, Aug 12 (PTI) The Maharashtra government on Monday informed the Bombay High Court that as per law, no prison in the state follows the system of solitary confinement, but prisoners convicted of heinous crimes were kept separately.

Public prosecutor Hiten Venegaonkar told a division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan that persons convicted for heinous offences, such as bomb blasts and so on, were separated from other inmates.

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The court was hearing a petition filed by Himayat Baig, convicted in the 2010 Pune blast case, who claimed he has been in solitary confinement at the Nashik Central prison for the last 12 years and sought to be shifted.

He has been sentenced to life imprisonment in the blast case.

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Venegaonkar told the court that no prison follows solitary confinement.

"Presently, we don't follow solitary confinement at all. We just separate convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for serious and heinous offences like blasts and so on from the other convicts," he told the court.

There is a distinction between solitary confinement and kept separately from other convicts, he said.

Venegaonkar said that as per section 11 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, only a court that has convicted the accused and sentenced him has the power to order him to be in solitary confinement for not more than three months.

The bench directed Venegaonkar to file a short affidavit stating the same and posted the matter for hearing after two weeks.

Baig was the only person to be convicted in the February 2010 blast at German Bakery, a popular eatery in Pune, in which 17 persons lost their lives and 60 others were injured.

Six others charge-sheeted in the case, including Yasin Bhatkal, who allegedly planted the bomb, are still absconding.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)