State prisons dept is also planning to get motion sensors to prevent inmates from escaping, smuggling contraband
To prevent inmates escaping from jails and contraband being smuggled into these facilities, the state prisons department will equip their perimeter walls with electric fences and motion sensors.
A senior official from the department said the project will be implemented in the nine central prisons after which it could cover the other smaller jails in Maharashtra. "Apart from preventing inmates from escaping, the motion sensors will thwart attempts made to throw goods across the walls into the premises," the official explained.
Speaking to DNA, Bhushan Kumar Upadhyaya, additional director general of police (prisons), confirmed that the proposal had been sent to the state government.
The central jails are located at Arthur Road (Mumbai), Yerawada (Pune), Nashik, Nagpur, Harsul (Aurangabad), Thane, Kalamba (Kolhapur), Adharwadi (Kalyan) and Taloja (Navi Mumbai).
"After the jail break at Nagpur in 2015 (in which five inmates had fled), a security audit of the central prisons was undertaken. It proposed setting up electric fencing with motion sensors on perimeter walls. The wire fence will be sufficient to stun an inmate coming into contact with it, but it will be non-lethal. These sensors will also generate SMS alerts in case someone tries to cross the wall. They will also detect if things are being thrown into the premises," explained an official from the department.
The electric fence will stand around one meter above the boundary walls.
In 2017, two inmates fled from Kalyan jail, by scaling the walls using a CCTV wire and in 2013, two undertrials ran away from Chandrapur prison in broad daylight. Four inmates had also run away from Kalamba jail in Kolhapur in 2004.
Officials said the overcrowding in these prisons, especially, those in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and urban areas, lack of adequate staff, official laxity and corruption has made it tough to police these facilities and ensure order. For instance, the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai is packed to numbers much beyond its capacity of 804 and the Yerawada central jail in Pune has 5,000 inmates, which is over double the capacity of 2,300.
Many of the state's central prisons are located in built-up areas, which leads to contraband being thrown into the premises for the use of convicts and inmates serving time there. This is despite the high boundary walls around them.
However, a home department official said the installation of CCTVs in common areas in the prisons had led to better surveillance on both, staff and inmates.
Maharashtra has 54 prisons — including nine central jails, 19 class-I district prisons, 23 class-II district prisons and three class-III district jails, in addition to 172 sub-jails. This also includes 13 open prisons, including two for women, one special prison at Ratnagiri, one prison for women at Byculla, one open colony at Atpadi in Sangli, and one Borstal school at Nashik.
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