A Delhi-based human rights lawyer has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Supreme Court for the release and rehabilitation of 70 inmates at a mental hospital in Uttar Pradesh, some of who have remained confined in the hospital since last 20 years despite being certified "mentally fit" by the doctors. "The simple reason why nobody has turned up to take these fully recovered patients is that their family doesn't want them back. There's a social stigma attached to it. That's why their families have deserted them," lawyer Gaurav Kumar Bansal, who filed the PIL on Monday, told ScoopWhoop. Bansal, who came to know about the condition of inmates through a news report, first filed three RTI applications in three mental hospitals of Uttar Pradesh. He also filed an application in the National Human Rights Commission to ascertain whether any of its members visited the hospital or not.

"But I am afraid there might be more," Bansal, a private lawyer whose legal activism focuses on environment and human rights, said. "There's no such record of the fully recovered patients with the hospital."

Among the 70 inmates, some of them have been at the hospital for more than three decades. The case of Sumitara Devi is a classic example. She was 20 when she was admitted in the hospital in 1983, since then the mental hospital has become her home. Similar is the case of Lucknow's Madan Lal Shah, who was admitted in the hospital in 1979. Like others, both don't know whether they'll ever set foot outside the premises of mental hospital.

A two-judge vacation bench of Supreme Court has postponed Bansal's plea for hearing after the summer vacation of the court. The summer vacation of the court ends on June 28.

"They have only one desire: to go out from the mental hospital and live freely," Bansal said.