Amendment status not verified — confirm the current text below against the official source.
(1) Prison offences shall be classified into minor and serious prison offences. (2) Following acts of the prisoners shall constitute minor prison offences, namely:- (i) failing to assist in maintenance of prison discipline; (ii) doing any act with the aim to create unnecessary alarm in the minds of other prisoners; (iii) omitting to report the commission of any prison offence; (iv) committing nuisance or mischief of any sort; (v) sending messages surreptitiously by writing or verbally; (vi) eating or apportioning any food not assigned to him or taking from or adding to the portions assigned to another prisoner, disobeying any order as to the issue and distribution of food and drink; (vii) being idle, careless or negligent at work, contumaciously refusing to work, malingering, disturbing other prisoners at work, or in barracks; (viii) performing any portion of the task allotted to another prisoner or obtaining unauthorized assistance of another prisoner in the performance of one’s own task; (ix) apportioning to any prisoner any part of the task to be performed by him; (x) soiling or befouling any place or article; (xi) loitering or lingering, leaving the appointed area, ward, place in the file or work-group without permission; (xii) omitting or refusing to keep clean his clothing, blankets, bedding or disobeying any orders as to the arrangement or disposition of such articles; (xiii) damaging the trees and vegetables in the garden of the prison, or maltreating the prison cattle; Prison offences. PUNJAB GOVT. GAZ.(EXTRA), MAY 21, 2026 (VYSK 31, 1948 SAKA) 604 (xiv) omitting or refusing to wear the clothing given to him, or exchanging any portion of it for the clothing of other prisoners or losing, discarding, damaging, or altering any part of it; (xv) omitting or refusing to keep oneself or his clothing, blankets, bedding or other personal articles, in a clean and hygienic condition, or disobeying any order regulating the cleanliness, hygiene of body and material goods; (xvi) removing, defacing, or altering any distinctive number, mark or badge attached to, or worn on the clothing or person; and (xvii) unauthorized cooking. (3) Following acts of the prisoners shall constitute serious prison offences, namely:- (i) endangering the security of the prison in any way, by a willful or negligent act and shall include tampering in any way with the prison walls, building, bars, locks and keys, lamps or lights or with any other security and custody measure; (ii) doing or omitting to do any act with an intent to cause to oneself any illness, injury or disability, including attempt to suicide; (iii) obstructing in maintaining law and order and prison discipline; (iv) planning, instigating and abetting, directly or indirectly, the commission of any prison offence; (v) refusing, omitting to abide by standards of behaviour, rules and regulations and lawful instructions and orders; (vi) failing to give assistance to a prison officer and prison staff when called to do so, or answering untruthfully any question put up by a prison officer or a visitor; (vii) making false, malicious and groundless, written or verbal, complaints against prison officers and staff; (viii) quarrelling with other prisoners, creating an environment of fear amongst the prisoners; PUNJAB GOVT. GAZ.(EXTRA), MAY 21, 2026 (VYSK 31, 1948 SAKA) 605 (ix) attacking, assaulting, and causing injuries to others, use of criminal force against prison officers or others; (x) participating in a riot or mutiny, abetting another prisoner to do the same; (xi) escaping or attempting to escape from prison or legal custody or failing to report to prison officers about attempted escapes; (xii) possessing any object or material removed from any larger object or from a building, which has been altered in such a manner that it can be used for damaging prison property or as a weapon of offence or as an implement to assist in escape from prison; (xiii) possessing, hiding, smuggling, attempting to smuggle, obtaining, giving or receiving and bartering contraband or prohibited articles; (xiv) failing to report to prison officials about contraband or prohibited articles; (xv) stealing, damaging, destroying, disfiguring or misappropriating any Government property or another prisoner’s articles and property; (xvi) failing to report at once, any loss, breakage or injury, which the prisoner may accidentally have caused to prison property or implements; (xvii) tampering with or defacing identity cards, records or documents of the prison; (xviii) breach of conditions of leave and emergency release; (xix) refusing to eat food or going on a hunger-strike; (xx) willfully or negligently destroying or spoiling food, or throwing it away without orders; (xxi) introducing into food or drink anything likely to render it unpalatable, unwholesome, or dangerous for human consumption; PUNJAB GOVT. GAZ.(EXTRA), MAY 21, 2026 (VYSK 31, 1948 SAKA) 606 (xxii) tampering with scale of food; (xxiii) violating rules and regulations framed for systematic running of the canteen and bartering canteen articles; (xxiv) manufacturing any article without the knowledge or permission of prison officials or causing adulteration during manufacturing; (xxv) mixing or adding a foreign substance to the materials issued for work; (xxvi) willfully disabling from labour; (xxvii) converting, or attempting to convert, a prisoner to a different religious faith; (xxviii) willfully hurting other's religious feelings, beliefs, practices, and faiths; (xxix) agitating or acting on the basis of caste or religious prejudices; (xxx) having any communication, in writing or by word or by signs, without permission, with any outsider, an under-trial prisoner, detenus, civil prisoners, and approvers; (xxxi) participating in or organizing, unauthorized activities like gambling and betting; (xxxii) using indecent, abusive, insolent, threatening or improper language; being disrespectful, making indecent or vulgar acts or gestures; (xxxiii) failing to assist, or preventing another person from assisting, prison officers in case of an attempted escape or suppressing violence, assault, riot, mutiny, attack, gross personal violence or any other emergencies; (xxxiv) omitting or refusing to report, as soon as it comes to his knowledge, the occurrence of any fire, plot or conspiracy for any escape, attempt or preparation to escape, and any attack, or preparation for attack, upon any prison officer or prisoner; PUNJAB GOVT. GAZ.(EXTRA), MAY 21, 2026 (VYSK 31, 1948 SAKA) 607 (xxxv) indulging in or assisting in any unauthorised financial transaction, whether within the premises of the prison or without; (xxxvi) stealing, damaging, destroying, disfiguring, misappropriating or making dysfunctional any government property, whether movable or immovable, on the prison premises or while in custody outside the prison; (xxxvii) stealing, damaging, destroying, disfiguring, misappropriating or making dysfunctional any government property or property of any prison officer or staff, whether movable or immovable, by a prisoner in association/conspiracy with other prisoners with intent to cause disorder or disturbance inside the prison or with intent to escape from prison; and (xxxviii) in case a minor offence is committed more than twice.