The Baleswar district jail authorities have taken initiatives to reduce the overcrowding of inmates after detection of positive cases among the inmates.
Since this has posed a serious concern for them, they are either shifting the inmates to other jails or sending them on special leave parole.
According to the Jail Superintendent Sujit Kumar Roul, five inmates were detected Covid positive although they were asymptomatic.
“One of them has recovered and others are under treatment at the District Headquarters Hospital (DHH). The affected ones have been lodged in the jail premises in isolation,” said Roul.
Reports said the jail while has a capacity of accommodating 480 inmates, currently it has 595 inmates. To reduce the burden of overcrowding and fearing the spread of Covid, the authorities have transferred 60 inmates to other jails of the district.
47 under trials while have been shifted to Soro Sub Jail, the rest 13 were transferred to Jaleswar Sub Jail. Further, a process is underway to send 12 inmates on parole for 90 days while previously 17 had been sent on parole in the first phase.
Roul informed the exercise of shifting inmates and sending in parole is being carried out as per the direction of court. “We have been regularly conducting disinfection exercises in the premises and utmost care is being adopted to curb the incident of virus infestation.
Further from time to time, the swab tests of all inmates are being carried out to ascertain any infected cases. More so, random antigen tests of the inmates are also carried out from time to time,” said Roul.