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Tamil Nadu
Visitors’ rooms in jails to get surveillance cameras
Improving facilities: Director-General of Police (Prisons) R. Nataraj handing over the house key to a jail warder’s family in Tiruchi on Saturday.
TIRUCHI: The Prisons Department will install surveillance cameras in the visitors’ rooms of the Central Prisons to enhance monitoring and prevent smuggling of prohibited articles.
The State government has accorded sanction and granted Rs.70 lakhs for installing surveillance cameras in the visitors’ rooms of all nine Central Prisons and the two Special Prison for Women, Director-General of Police (Prisons) R. Nataraj told reporters after inaugurating the housing quarters constructed for the jail warders here on Saturday.
The Prisons Department planned to construct district jails in 12 places to reduce congestion in the Central Prisons.
This apart, the Department would establish open air jails at Sivaganga and Thanjavur. The government had sanctioned Rs. 2 crore for the Sivaganga open air jail.
A Rs. 400-crore comprehensive prison modernisation proposal had been prepared and submitted to the State government for being forwarded to the Centre. The Centre would bear 75 per cent of the cost and the State would pay the rest. The Department would tap the funds for installing access control equipment such as X-ray scanners, cameras and remote surveillance in all Central Prisons, and for constructing district jails.
Mr. Nataraj said the Department had already spent Rs. 90 crore out of the Rs. 100 crore sanctioned under the prison modernisation scheme in Phase I.
R. Durairaj, Deputy Inspector-General of Prisons, Tiruchi Range, and A. Murugesan, Superintendent of Prison, Central Prison, Tiruchi were present.
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