No coin-phone facility for hardened criminals, barring those on death row

DGP (prisons) B K Upadhyay

Senior officers of the state prison department have asked its staff to ensure that hardened criminals lodged in cases of terrorism, bomb blasts, Naxalism or underworld are not allowed to use the coin-box telephone facility inside jails, but those on death row are exempt from this.

In a letter issued on July 27, outgoing addl. DGP (prisons) B K Upadhyay, now posted as Nagpur CP, had asked the staff to maintain a register. The letter says calls should be monitored, and if there are security issues in taking the convict from his cell to the phone, these should be installed near the high security cells itself.

Sources said hardened criminals are a risk and not allowed calls, as they misuse the facility. But those on death row are given access on sympathetic grounds. The facility allows an inmate to call his/her relatives under supervision of the jail staff, who verify the numbers on which calls are made to ensure there is no misuse.

A jail officer said inmates who are a nuisance and get into fights are not given access to this facility as they misuse it by passing coded messages to try and run some racket. He added that all calls to convicts on death row are properly monitored.

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