In its order, the high court also directed the Director

General (Prisons) to consider implementation of the model prison manual suggested by the Centre in 2016.

The Chief Secretary of Delhi government has also been directed to give the timeline within which all new prisons would be operationalised.

The direction came after Delhi government standing counsel Rahul Mehra submitted before the court that at the new jail in Mandoli in east Delhi, two prisons having a total capacity of 1500 prisoners were already functional and two more, one of them for women, having a capacity of 650 inmates each shall be operationalised within the next two weeks.

However, no timeline for operationalising the two prisons was placed before the court, which therefore directed the government to give the details.

The bench took on record a status report submitted by the IHBAS which has said that two halfway homes with a total capacity of 50 have been operationalised from February 15.

Construction of a third halfway home for 100 additional inmates was underway, IHBAS had told the court.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)