BHUBANESWAR: In what might cheer up the inmates in jails in Odisha, their members of the family can now meet them after practically 10 months.
With vaccination drives underway and Covid-19 an infection underneath management, the state authorities has allowed the prisons directorate to renew the bodily ‘family-inmate’ Mulaqat in jails.
The federal government had launched e-Mulaqat system within the jails in April final 12 months within the wake of Covid outbreak. However the brand new system had encountered teething troubles, together with web connectivity points in some jails, inflicting inconvenience for the members of the family of the inmates.
The members of the family used to make video calls to cellphone numbers that had been shared by the jails.
“Final month, we had requested the house division to permit us to revive the bodily Mulaqat system. The federal government has given its approval. It will give an enormous psychological aid to the inmates. Assembly their close to and pricey bodily after a number of months will make the prisoners joyful,” director common of police (prisons) Santosh Upadhyay advised TOI.
Upadhyay mentioned the jail superintendents have been strictly requested to observe the federal government’s Covid pointers, together with social distancing norm whereas conducting the Mulaqat system. Sufficient hand sanitizers and face masks have been provided to all jails.
The authorities of prisons, that are most susceptible to Covid transmission, had adopted stringent protocols to maintain their premises free from an infection throughout the peak of the pandemic final 12 months.
The state residence division had issued a typical working process (SOP) to 4 main arresting authorities of the state government–police, vigilance, excise and forest–and requested them to compulsorily topic all newly arrested accused individuals to Covid-19 take a look at – both RT-PCR or fast antigen take a look at (RAT) – earlier than producing them in courtroom and taking them to the judicial custody.
No less than 44 jails of complete 85 had been rattled by the Covid virus final 12 months. Of round 17,477 inmates within the 85 jails, round 1591 had examined optimistic for Covid-19 virus within the 44 prisons. Whereas 1319 of them had recovered, seven prisoners succumbed to the virus.
At current, the inhabitants of inmates in jails stands at 18980 as towards the scheduled energy of 19799. Covid vaccination of the employees of prisons began final week.
