Bhubaneswar: Director General (Prisons) Manoj Kumar Chhabra has proposed to the Odisha government to affix GPS-enabled tracking devices on undertrial prisoners facing non-heinous crimes and decongest jails.
“In India the biggest problem faced by the prisons is overcrowding. Though the problem is not so pronounced in Odisha, there is overcrowding in some jails. 80 percent of the prisoners are undertrials who have not been convicted. As per law, they are not criminals and we cannot treat them like criminals. At times they stay in jails for years together, so our effort should be that undertrial prisoners should stay in their homes, in society. So we are thinking of a tracker or monitoring device for these undertrial prisoners,” explained DG (Prisons) Manoj Chhabra speaking to reporters on his proposal to the State government.
There is also a Supreme Court judgement and direction that wherein the imprisonment term for the offence is below 7 years, the person should not kept in jail as undertrial prisoner, Chhabra added.
“So we in the Jail Department thought why not use technology to solve this complex problem? In advanced Western countries, several types of trackers and monitoring systems are being used. The advantage is that person without staying inside jail the person is monitored by law enforcement authorities. These trackers are tamper-proof,” Chhabra said.
The DG (Prisons) said that there are different stakeholders like IT Dept, Law Dept and the Judiciary and after their go ahead if the pilot project is executed Odisha will be the first state in the country to do so.
