Jails to get more CCTV cameras, 4G jammers

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, December 1

The Punjab Government has decided to install 50 CCTV cameras inside the jails in Faridkot, Bathinda and Muktsar.

The measure of increasing the number of CCTV cameras is aimed at increasing surveillance, said ADGP (Jails) Rohit Chaudhary, who visited the Faridkot jail on Saturday.

Lately, a prisoner escaped from the Faridkot Central Jail under mysterious circumstances and four jail officials were placed under suspension for dereliction of duty here, said Rohit Chaudhary.

Failing to trace the route or the modus-operandi which the prisoner, Jaspreet Singh, had adopted to escape from the jail on Wednesday night, the jail authorities in Faridkot are on tenterhooks, trying to unlock the mystery.

Easy access to mobile phones in jails is helping prisoners in making audacious jail-break attempts. So, the state government has once again started pursuing the matter of installing 4G jammers in the jail.

As the earlier installed jammers, used to curtail the second and third generation (2G and 3G) network, are unable to block the 4G communication, the state government has already raised the matter with the Union government and demonstration of this pilot project has already been started, said Chaudhary.

“Installing the jammers is not within the domain of the state government. We have to take the Union government into confidence, which is why it is taking some time,” he said.

“So that the hardcore criminals and gangsters are not taken to the courts for every hearing, the state government has already started construction of designated courts in some jails where the designated judges will hear the cases within jail premises. We are waiting for the High court nod to notify these courts and to start these,” said Chaudhary.

During his visit here, ADGP (Jails) promoted eight jail officials, including warders who have completed 25 years of their service.

More than 450 employees in the jails across the state, who have completed 25 years of service, are being given promotion to the next rank, said Chaudhary.

He said the department had also revived 150 posts of sub-assistant superintendent and 50 posts of senior assistant superintendent.

The ADGP (Jails) said for the facility of the prisoners, under-trials and their family members, the jails in the state would have new waiting rooms. 

He also directed the jail authorities to increase the number of phones in the PCO in the jails. 

De-addiction at jail

In Faridkot jail, housing 1,796 prisoners and inmates, including 94 women, about 30 per cent of them are in some kind of drugs treatment programme, getting medicine from the drugs de-addiction centre in the jail. 

“Giving them medicine and counselling, we are trying to find a way to intervene and offer what we can to these prisoners and inmates,” said a doctor at the jail.