Jail forced to use separate utensils for Mahendrakumar Patel.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: The taxpayers of Iowa are footing a $12,000 bill for the legal expenses of one Mahendrakumar Patel, who successfully sued the state’s Department of Corrections for using cooking methods that violated his religious beliefs.
Patel, 46, is a life-long vegetarian, and is currently serving a 25 years prison term that began in 2006, after he was convicted of stalking and trying to kill his former girlfriend in the state capital of Des Moines (Patel has maintained that he was falsely convicted of the charges).
Patel is an adherent of Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan (BAPS), one of the many sects of Hinduism which believes very strongly that animals should not be harmed for human gratification.
Over the course of his term, Patel noticed that the meals cooked in the prison’s mess hall were done with pots and pans used to cook both meat and vegetables, a violation of Patel’s strict vegetarian beliefs. Although the prison reportedly attempted to make accommodations for Patel, he ultimately ended up going on multiple hunger strikes for a total of 236 days, losing nearly 75 pounds in the process. Allegedly, when Patel refused to eat the prison’s food, he was sometimes punished.
During the trial, Patel and his attorney, Patrick Ingram, admitted that the prison made attempts to give Patel food he could eat, but said that none of these were ultimately satisfactory. For its part, the Department of Corrections said that its accommodations were just never good enough for Patel, who would allegedly come up with some new complaint each time the prison changed things for him.
Now, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Ross Walters has ruled that the Iowa Department of Corrections is in violation of a federal statute that says they must do everything in their power to accommodate the religious beliefs of an inmate. This means that, from now on, the Patel’s prison will have to use separate utensils when cooking vegetarian food, or at least food for Patel himself, and will likely incur small additional costs for doing so.
Patel’s strict vegetarianism prevents him from eating all kinds of meats, and eggs as well. Additionally, court documents say that he refused to eat food or eat off of dishes that had come into contact with onions, garlic, and mayonnaise.