CM Hemant Soren to inspect all jails in Jharkhand 

Ranchi, June 18: For the first time any chief minister of Jharkhand would be inspecting prisons.

 Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren held a high-level review meeting with the officials of the prison department on Friday and announced in a statement issued by the chief minister’s secretariat that he would be personally inspecting all the 31 jails in the state and inquire about the condition of undertrials and the facility provided in the jails.

The main objective of the review meeting was to know the capacity of prisoners in jails and the presence of prisoners more than their capacity. The Chief Minister took detailed information related to the convicted and undertrial prisoners lodged in the state jails. Along with this, many important instructions were given to the officers.

The Chief Minister said that more prisoners are lodged in the jails of the state than the capacity. Of these, the maximum number of prisoners are those who have been sentenced to less than three years. Concrete steps should be taken in this direction, how the trial of the cases of these prisoners should be completed in the courts at the earliest.

The Chief Minister directed the officers to take appropriate steps in the direction of providing free legal aid through advocates to the prisoners in the case of undertrials (especially those sentenced to less than three years). With this, the jail department should take concrete initiative towards legal action. At the same time, it was told by the officials that through Jhalsa and Dlsa, continuous initiatives are being taken to execute the cases of undertrial prisoners through the courts.

The Chief Minister asked the officers to provide more detailed information regarding undertrial prisoners, on which appropriate decisions can be taken after discussing in detail in the meeting. The Chief Minister said that the number of minority prisoners along with Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is high in the jails of the state. Most of these cases are under trial. The Chief Minister said that the cases related to the prisoners belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes should be specially investigated.

Let us inform that the total number of jails in the state is 31. There are seven Central Jails, 16 District Jails and seven Upkaras. The total capacity of these jails is 17, 421, while 19, 619 prisoners are lodged in them. There are 14,445 undertrials in these jails, while the number of convicted prisoners is more than 5200.