Minister Harjot Singh Bains inspects Amritsar jail, seizes 8 cellphones

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Amritsar, October 20

Jails Minister Harjot Singh Bains today inspected the high-security Amritsar Central Jail here. He along with the staff carried out a search operation, seizing eight mobile phones.

Bains also found that jail inmates had made several hidden pockets in the platforms to conceal mobile phones and other prohibited material. These pockets were created by pulling out bricks from beneath the platforms constructed for inmates.

46% inmates addicts

The Jails Minister said following a survey of jails in Punjab, around 46 per cent of 33,000 inmates were found to be drug addicts

He said the number of prisoners keen to get de-addiction treatment in jails was very small. He said the government had started a mission to rehabilitate them

According to information, the minister seized six mobile phones from barracks while two were found in a bundle apparently thrown from outside into the jail complex. The bundle contained small packets of cigarettes and bidis, besides two mobile phones. Bains interacted with jail officials and inmates also.

Only yesterday, the jail authorities had confiscated 900 sedative pills and three mobile phones, after which cases were registered at the Islamabad police station here. Speaking to media, the minister said since the AAP government came into power, various steps had been taken to improve conditions in the jails.

He said in the past six months, as many as 3,600 mobile phones had been seized across Punjab jails.

Talking about the RF technology, he said this latest technique to jam mobile phone signals would be introduced to end the problem of smuggling and illegal use of cellphones inside the jails. He said Punjab would be the first state to adopt this technology in the country.

Asserting that the government would install body scanners to search the prisoners entering the jail complex, Bains said the high-security cells where gangsters, notorious criminals and cross-border smugglers were lodged would be covered with iron mesh so that no mobile phone or any other prohibited material could be smuggled in. He said the jail authorities had been directed to frisk the gangsters twice a day in order to stem the problem.