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Leper prisoner released courtesy fine paid by prison officials
View(s):One day in May, Shahul Hameed Zubair, a businessman from Puttalam, ended up being arrested and hauled up before the Wellawaya Magistrate’s Court for “drunk and disorderly conduct and indecent behaviour”. The court slapped a Rs. 2,500 fine on him, but he was unable to pay it. The Magistrate then ordered him remanded for two months in the Moneragala prison.
The guard admitting Zubair to Moneragala prison on May 27, saw a man who seemed much older than the 54 years stated on the prisoner record, looking “completely out of it” with a “rash all over his body.” Zubair was taken for a medical inspection at a free clinic conducted by the Moneragala General Hospital. The “sickly-looking” Zubair was brought back to prison diagnosed with leprosy and needing medication.
The diagnosis scared the prison officials more than it did Zubair. They feared an epidemic, with the 350 prisoners and 60 officers housed at the Moneragala prison complex becoming lepers. The officials immediately put him in isolation for four days. They wanted Zubair out of their hands as soon as possible. They tried to contact Zubair’s relatives or anyone who could pay his fine and take him home. Zubair didn’t seem to have any, and even the local mosque authorities didn’t respond to their requests.
Come Poson Poya day, the officers decided to collect money on their own to pay the fine. After the dansala conducted by the prison was over, five officers contributed Rs. 500 each to have Zubair released. “We considered it pin, good karmic merit, to do it on Poya day, and also a social service, considering the Sinhala-Muslim tensions in the country, to help a Muslim man’s release,” said one of the officers who contributed.
The officers tried to explain to Zubair, who barely spoke Sinhala, in the best Sinhala they could manage, what was happening. On his release, the officers gave Zubair some money for his trip home to Puttalam and sent him on his way. “Our responsibility towards him ended when he was no longer a prisoner,” a prison official said.
Medical officers, on the other hand, found the whole incident somewhat amusing. “Unlike in the past, leprosy is a manageable and a curable disease,” said Welikada Prison Hospital Medical Officer-in-Charge Gayani Thiskumar. “There’s no need to worry about it or isolate patients. Once the patient begins the treatment, the disease becomes non-infectious within 24 hours. We diagnose leprosy patients every day, even yesterday [June 19] we had a leprosy patient. There’s nothing to be alarmed about.”
A much stigmatised disease in the past, leprosy is caused by a slow-growing bacteria and mainly affects the “skin, the peripheral nerves, mucosa of the upper respiratory tract and the eyes,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO). H.N. Weerasinghe, Leprosy Control Public Health Inspector (PHI) for Moneragala district, who oversaw Zubair’s case, said there is an increase in the number of leprosy cases being reported in the country, therefore the PHIs are “constantly on the lookout and documenting cases.”
“Zubair’s case has been reported to the PHI in Puttalam, where his family should be made aware of his disease,” Mr Weerasinghe said.