The shock expressed by two judgers of the High Court has forced Kerala government to urgently improve the conditions in Thiruvananthapuram Mental Health Centre at Peroorkada.

On July 21, two days after they visited the Mental Health Centre, Justices Devan Ramachandran and Basant Balaji expressed their pain and outrage at what they saw unfold within the hospital with remarkable judicial restraint. “It deeply concerned us, to say the least,” the judges said. Sources in the Mental Health Centre said the judges were rattled by what they encountered.

Health minister K Muraleedharan on Sunday said that the government would prepare a “masterplan” to address the deeply disturbing conditions that were documented by the two judges. The minister also promised to honour all the orders issued by the judges.

After their visit, the judges had listed primarily six action points. One, take immediate steps to fill up all the vacant posts of attenders and report to the Court on August 4, the next posting date. (There are 158 sanctioned posts of attenders but the Centre has only 127, and they are also asked to cook and clean and chaperone the patients.)

Two, file an affidavit before this Court explaining why the centre has no cooks, dhobis or enough drivers before August 4. Three, inform the Court why, apart from a ‘sergeant’, there are no other specialised security personnel. (This order stems from the assessment that a minimum of 40-50 security personnel are required to guard the perimeter of the Centre, especially because large stretches of the Centre’s periphery are not protected by fencing or compound wall.)

Four, file an affidavit before this Court on the present status of the half-constructed buildings, proposals and deadlines for their completion. (There are two incomplete structures inside the Centre, one intended to be a modern male psychiatric ward and the other a ‘halfway home’ to reintegrate the recovered patients back into society.)

This affidavit should also tell the Court when the roads inside the Centre would be tarred and returned to good condition. (The judges termed the condition of roads “pitiable”. If it was impossible for normal people to walk these roads without tripping, the judges wondered what fate waited patients who had to use them.)

Five, the same affidavit should also tell the Court how the building now used for Clinical Psychology can be made more beneficial for the patients.

Six, submit a rehabilitation plan for the ‘fit to be discharged’ patients. (The Mental Health Centre has 531 beds and 437 patients. Of this, 55 are ‘fit to be discharged’ but cannot be because their families are unwilling to take them back.)

Forget unfilled posts; even a fundamental thing like cutting down a tree that could fall any moment over a ward has not been done. “Even the smallest of things, which ought to have normally obtained the urgent attention of the Authorities, did not appear to be

receiving it. This was manifest when we saw that the branch of a tree was dangerously overhanging Ward No.22, with the potential to cause great harm,” the judges noted in their July 21 order. Rather than cut the dangerous looking tree, the authorities shifted the patients from the ward.

“The distressing aspect is that any Authority – including the District Collector, could have invoked their powers to remove the branch, which would have taken no more than half a day’s work, at the most,” the judges said.

The judges witnessed far worse things. “We saw that most of the patients, if not all, were confined to their rooms or cells, which were locked; and this was more painful because we witnessed men and women walking up and down in the cells/rooms in a restless manner, with many of them requesting us to set them free. We are not sure how the patients can improve if they are confined to spaces like this,” the judges said.

They said the Centre had enough open space, it is a 31-acre campus, and implored the government to “think out of the box”.