Amid apprehensions of a possible 2nd wave of Coronavirus this winter, the prisons directorate has sought the intervention of the Orissa High Court to prevent the jails in the state from becoming overcrowded.
Though the authorities concerned had taken steps to decongest the jails between April & July following an Apex Court directive to states, the situation is back to square one with most jails being packed with under trial prisoners.
The number of jail inmates has gone up with an increase in arrests across the state over the last few weeks. The successive lockdowns to prevent COVID-19, followed by shutdowns & growing infection among a large number of police personnel had put the brakes on crackdowns on criminal activities earlier.
To prevent overcrowding of jails, the prisons directorate has requested the HC to ask the Lower Courts not to remand the accused in judicial custody, if the punishment of the offences committed by the arrested persons is less than 7 years of imprisonment.
In a letter to the Orissa HC’s registrar general on Tuesday, Director General of prisons Santosh Upadhyay said the 86 jails of the state have 18,732 inmates as against the capacity of 19,079.
The Letter said that “It is quite difficult to maintain social distancing among prisoners in jails. Despite repeated requests & directives from your good office, a large number of undertrial prisoners have been remanded in different jails by various Courts for offences that have punishments below 7 years. This is in contravention to an earlier order passed by the High Court of Orissa on May 5, 2020".
On May 5, the High Court of Orissa asked the Police not to arrest the accused in connection with crimes such as theft, burglary, house trespasses, obscene acts, & wrongful restraint & confinement among others where the maximum sentence is up to 7 years. It had said unless there was a necessity of arrest to maintain law & order in a cognizable offence prescribing sentence up to 7 years imprisonment, the Police shouldn't be in a hurry to arrest the accused.
A few days ago, the prisons directorate had issued an advisory following a recent directive by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to all states regarding the safety of prisoners & jail staff during the pandemic.
The home department had also issued a standard operating procedure to the four major arresting authorities of the State Govt - Police, Vigilance, Excise & Forest. According to the SOP, the arresting authorities will compulsorily subject all newly arrested accused persons to Covid-19 test —- either RT-PCR or rapid antigen test (RAT) —- depending on the availability of the testing facilities in their areas before producing the latter in Court & their subsequent remand in Judicial Custody.
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