BHOPAL: Electric fencing will be installed at all central jails in Madhya Pradesh, including those at Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Jabalpur, Gwalior, Rewa, Satna, Barwani, Sagar, Narsinghpur and Hoshangabad, to prevent any audacious attempt by inmates to escape.
The October 31, 2016 jailbreak by eight SIMI men from the Bhopal jail forced the jail department to opt for an effective mechanism to prevent any recurrence.
An internal audit committee headed by ADG (Jail) Sudhir Shahi was constituted by the jail department to review security situation at the sensitive prisons. Electric fencing was one of the important recommendations made by the panel. The Central Industrial Security Force made a similar recommendation following the audit of the Bhopal jailbreak.
“We’ll start with the most sensitive ones, including Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Rewa and Satna, by the end of 2018 and try to cover all the 11 central jails by the beginning of 2019,” DG, Prisons, Sanjay Chaudhary said.
Over `3 crore has been sanctioned by the state for the first phase of the project.In the second phase, other sensitive jails such as the Tantya Bheel Jail in Khandwa from where seven SIMI men had escaped on October 1, 2013, and the district jail in Maoist-affected Balaghat district will be covered.
Already operational in most of the sensitive jails in Chhattisgarh, Telangana and some jails in UP, the fence will render non-lethal, but powerful electric shocks of micro second duration to anyone who comes in its contact.
“It will not only throw the possible jail breaker away, but also raise an intruder alarm and immediately set in motion an intruder video system, as the twin systems are entwined in the new electric fence shield,” said Chaudhary. No one will be able to climb out of the jail, nor intruders break through the outer walls to aide jailbreaks.