It’s not an easy job for prison officials to keep a check on the inmates who are terror suspects or convicts, as it always involves a threat to their own life.
However, the Telangana Prisons Department is setting an example by keeping each suspect imprisoned in separate barracks with round-the-clock CCTV vigil on them, following which untoward incidents were avoided. There are restrictions on their movement and the inmates are not allowed to interact with each other, said Director General of Prisons and Correctional Services Vinoy Kumar Singh.
“We have 30-odd terror suspects imprisoned in three central prisons in the State and they create a lot of problems. But, we have to control them,” he said, adding that the terror suspects are lodged in special ‘Swastik’ barracks. On several occasions, they refuse to attend the court trials citing health reasons and turn violent, Mr Singh said.
At the annual press conference here on Thursday, the chief of State Prisons Department not only elaborated on the work done by them during 2018, but he also threw light on how they managed to bring down the death of prisoners from 56 in 2014 to just eight last year.
“Our initiatives, including regular medical check-ups, physical training, quality food to inmates and complete ban on smoking and consumption of other tobacco products are the main reasons behind the reduction in deaths,” Mr Kumar said.
So far, 7,079 men and 4,440 women beggars, who were lodged in Anand Ashram, were released on a personal undertaking that they will not resort to begging again. Currently 240 male and 35 female beggars are lodged in Anand Ashram, he said.
According to him, the number of persons lodged in jails in the State saw an increase of 76,443 against 68,369 people lodged last year. Currently, 5,608 prisoners are confined in different jails, out of whom 2,081 are convicts, 3,228 are undertrials, 299 are detenues and 406 are women prisoners. The prisons in the entire State can accommodate 7,133 persons.
