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Follow UsStarting with UP, the primary jails across the country will soon boast
of
facilities for conducting trials of prisoners. In a major
e-governance initiative, the government has decided to avoid as much as
possible the traveling of under-trials to the various courts for their
hearing. A precedence to this exists in Jharkhand, where a
management system was implemented and is up and running for all
jails in the state.
Thanks to the system, all prisons in the state can now boast of an
extensive prisoners database. This includes verification through
biometric functions and segregation of all prisoners into categories
like convicts, under trials, detenues; first time offenders or habitual
offenders; prisoners suffering from communicable diseases, etc.
The case details of every prisoner and the next date of appearing in
court, date of release, etc, are all recorded automatically. The system
also has features which can automatically calculate and transfer the
remission earned through the period of imprisonment. It also maintains
a history ticket for each prisoner which contains a record of
achievements and punishments during the term served.
The visitors management system also has helped in bringing greater
efficiency and order into the prisons. The details of every visitor,
including photographs, are captured and monitored. An automatic refusal
is issued to people who are visiting before an appropriate time lapse.
Although the systems in UP jails will not be as comprehensive, at the
first level, they are trying to obliterate travel and the
risks associated with it.
"We had been planning to find some way to avoid periodical
transportation of undertrials to courts for seeking extension of their
remand, which needs to be done every 14 days. Once the
videoconferencing facility is in place, the task will become simple,"
State Additional Director General (Prisons) Sulkhan Singh told IANS.
The facility will be introduced in seven prisons at Meerut, Naini,
Mirzapur, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Varanasi and Lucknow in May. It will be
extended to all the 62 jails in the state over the next five years.
In Lucknow alone, 300-400 undertrials are taken from the local district
jail to various courts every day. That involves huge logistics, apart
from security threat.
Admitting that over 100 under-trials escape from police custody every
year while traveling between jail and courts Singh said, "The proposed
videoconferencing arrangement will prove as a savior for
too.
Given the scale of the operation, there is a huge opportunity for the
players in the videoconferencing space. Although no details of the
vendors are out as yet, bidding is yet to start in several cases. And
over and above that, it will help in reducing the
footprint of the police too!
Jails to Conduct Trials using Videoconferencing
New Update
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