Odisha to resume Mulaqat in jails after 10 months
BHUBANESWAR: In what may cheer up the inmates in jails in Odisha, their family members can now meet them after nearly 10 months.
With vaccination drives underway and Covid-19 infection under control, the state government has allowed the prisons directorate to resume the physical ‘family-inmate’ Mulaqat in jails.
The government had introduced e-Mulaqat system in the jails in April last year in the wake of Covid outbreak. But the new system had encountered teething troubles, including internet connectivity issues in some jails, causing inconvenience for the family members of the inmates.
The family members used to make video calls to phone numbers that were shared by the jails.
“Last month, we had requested the home department to allow us to restore the physical Mulaqat system. The government has given its approval. This will give a huge psychological relief to the inmates. Meeting their near and dear physically after several months will make the prisoners happy,” director general of police (prisons) Santosh Upadhyay told TOI.
Upadhyay said the jail superintendents have been strictly asked to follow the government’s Covid guidelines, including social distancing norm while conducting the Mulaqat system. Adequate hand sanitizers and face masks have been supplied to all jails.
The authorities of prisons, which are most vulnerable to Covid transmission, had adopted stringent protocols to keep their premises free from infection during the peak of the pandemic last year.
The state home department had issued a standard operating procedure (SOP) to four major arresting authorities of the state government–police, vigilance, excise and forest–and asked them to compulsorily subject all newly arrested accused persons to Covid-19 test – either RT-PCR or rapid antigen test (RAT) – before producing them in court and taking them to the judicial custody.
At least 44 jails of total 85 were rattled by the Covid virus last year. Of around 17,477 inmates in the 85 jails, around 1591 had tested positive for Covid-19 virus in the 44 prisons. While 1319 of them had recovered, seven prisoners succumbed to the virus.
At present, the population of inmates in jails stands at 18980 as against the scheduled strength of 19799. Covid vaccination of the staff of prisons started last week.