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This story is from November 2, 2016

UP jail minister worried in Bhopal aftermath, says condition abysmal in state

<arttitle><b>UP jail minister worried in Bhopal aftermath, says condition abysmal in state</b></arttitle>
BAREILLY: Close on the heels of the Bhopal jailbreak, one rape and murder accused escaped from Lakhimpur Kheri district jail on Monday night. Jail authorities at various places in UP say this could happen at any jail in the state which is battling a severe staff crunch. At the root of this is creation of four new district jails, Sonbhadra, Baghpat, Noida and Kasganj, in the past two years where no recruitment was made and the staff was arranged from other jails, which are already short of strength, on deputation.
With a total of 60 district jails in UP run by a staff of 4,120 warders as against the required strength of 7,000, these prisons are not only severely ill-guarded, the problem is compounded by overcrowding of inmates. The jails are literally bursting at the seams with no new central jail added to the country's most populous state since Independence. As one prison staff in Bareilly said wryly: "We have problems, but god is with us."
A highly placed source in the prison administration claimed that bureaucratic lethargy has made the existing prisons extremely vulnerable. “There has been no recruitment in the recent past, due to which the prison administration has not been able to sanction staff for the new jails. Guards from the existing ones are being deputed here. This has compromised security of the central jails where dreaded criminal are lodged,” he said.
UP’s jail minister Balwant Singh Ramoowalia said, “The condition is abysmal in all the jails. When there were just 60,000 inmates in jails a few years ago, we had 7,000 warders. Now when there are 94,000 inmates and we are left with just 4,000. The other 3,000 positions are lying vacant.”
Ramoowalia rued that no action has been taken on recruitment even after it was decided that police recruitment board would be entrusted with the task. “Allegations of massive corruption were raised at the time of recruitment. So we decided to hand over the entire process to police recruitment board, which is again sitting on the matter and aggravating the situation,” he said.
Inspector general of police (prisons) Gopal Meena, however, said all precautions are being taken to avoid a Bhoapl-like incident. “We have been facing staff crunch, which we will soon overcome. Security in all sensitive central jails has been stepped up with 24x7 CCTV monitoring, jammers and PAC deployed at each of these prisons,” he said.
A prison staff, on the condition of anonymity, claimed that security can be compromised "any time" at the central jails’ concentration cells where high-profile criminal are kept. “The state government has woken up in the aftermath of Bhopal jail, but it has not yet understood the gravity of the matter. No reinforcement has been sent even through directives have been issued to step up security,” he said.
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