The State government told the Bombay High Court on Tuesday that it would like to adopt measures on testing and creating temporary prisons recommended by advocates, to keep COVID-19 at bay in prisons across the State.
One of the suggestions is that the State should create separate quarantine facilities for asymptomatic and COVID-19-positive prisoners, and instruct police officers not to arrest the accused “unless custody is inevitable.”
Senior advocate Mihir Desai along with advocate Isha Khandelwal presented a document before a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M.S. Karnik as suggestions to a draft circulated by the advocate general with respect to testing inmates and creating temporary prisons. Among other things, the advocates’ suggestions relate to documenting the number of beds available, the total square foot area available per inmate, the list of inmates in temporary prisons, the number of rooms and prisoners per room, as well as the number of bathrooms.
“Prisoners must be tested before being shifted from one jail to another. Where other inmates have been diagnosed as COVID-positive, all the prisoners and staff from such correctional facilities (temporary prisons included) must be tested,” says the document of suggestions.
Testing can be done in a phased manner, and priority should be given to inmates and staff over 50 years of age, and those with co-morbidities, it says. Every prisoner should be allowed one call per week to contact either the family or lawyer for 10 minutes at a go, as opposed to two minutes earlier. Prisons should update the family members and lawyers of those who are asymptomatic but COVID-19 positive with mild, moderate or severe symptoms, it says.
Prison population
The capacity of prisons in Maharashtra is 24,032 while the prison population as on March 23, as per the first High Powered Committee (HPC), is 37,192. The ideal prison population to maintain physical distancing, the State says, is 16,000.
As on May 11, 5,105 undertrials were granted bail while 2,229 convicts were granted emergency parole. On May 23, the prison population reduced to 29,762. On June 19, according to the State, prison population was at 28,950, including 22,588 undertrials and 6,362 convicts.