Mumbai: The Maharashtra Prisons and Correctional Services Department has started providing video call facilities to foreign inmates. The facility through ePrisons system was earlier limited to the inmates in the prisons across the state to contact their families and relatives.
The Additional Director General of Prisons Amitabh Gupta issued a circular and directed all the prison heads in the state to allow the foreign inmates of the said facilities except those inmates of Pakistan, Bangladesh and those involved in terrorist activities.
637 foreign inmates in state
According to the prisons officials, as of today, 637 foreign inmates are lodged in various prisons of the state. Especially in the jails of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and other metropolitan cities, the number of foreign inmates is high. Citizens of countries such as Nigeria, Bangladesh, Kenya, Colombia, Iran, Iraq, Britain, Greece, Guinea, Ghana, Brazil, Thailand, Uganda, China, Pakistan, Nepal etc. arrested for various crimes are lodged in the prisons across the state.
"As the relatives or lawyers of the foreign prisoners cannot come to meet and interview in person, it becomes difficult for the foreign prisoners to get legal help and to be released from prison. Due to this, displeasure starts to increase among the foreign inmates, so the prison administration has to keep a constant watch on the said inmates. Making the facility available to foreign nationals will help them get faster legal aid and help them get out of jail sooner. This will also help to reduce the overcrowding in prisons to some extent," said a prisons department official.
The said facility was firstly conducted on Thursday between a foreign detainee lodged in Arthur Road Jail and his relatives through video conferencing through ePrisons, a system developed by NIC under the guidance of Union Home Department after meeting all the technical requirements.
