Three days’ confinement on bread and water is considered the most severe administrative punishment possible in the Navy, and it may only be awarded to enlisted sailors in the three lowest pay grades.
The idea of confining people found guilty of relatively minor offences and feeding them only plain bread and water for days at a time has been around for more than a century.
Even, in the Dagshai jail, prisoners were ‘disciplined’ by giving them bread and water as punishment. Under this punishment, a prisoner was made to stand still in a small gap between the cell door and the outer iron grills and given only bread and water.
When prisoners were sentenced to “bread and water” it was a punishment which caused severe pain and hardship due to constipation.