Dawn comes, evening falls. Nizam Uddin spends his days in a small, enclosed room.
You can’t even see the open sky through the gaps in the iron bars. Every day is the same, only the pages of the calendar change.
He has been spending his life inside this cell, known as the ‘Condemn Cell’, for 24 consecutive years. His identity is now more than his name—’Prisoner Number 8991/A’.
He had appealed to the High Court against the death sentence in the lower court long ago, but even after two decades, that appeal has not been resolved.
So every morning is the beginning of another wait for him, every night another chapter of uncertainty. The condom cell of Kashimpur high-security prison is now his permanent address.
The High Court had issued an order on May 13, 2024, declaring the process illegal so that the convicts would not have to spend their lives in agony in the condemnation cell before the death sentence was finalized. As a result of the Chamber Court’s stay of the order, hundreds of death row prisoners like Nizam Uddin are spending their days in the darkness of the condemnation cell.