NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has asked the prison department whether it has any policy to vaccinate all the inmates in Tihar’s Central Jail-6, as ‘there are greater chances of spreading of the Covid-19 infection within the enclosed premises of the prison’.
This was one of several queries the court posed to the prison department on the issues of online and physical mulaqats or meetings, tele-calling facilities for inmates who have tested positive, operationalising of the computer centre in the jail and computers for the legal aid room there.
The queries by Justice Prathiba M Singh came while hearing a plea filed by two JNU students Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita who are also Pinjra Tod activists, seeking facilities which included physical mulaqats, computer centre for video conferencing and legal aid.
Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage) was founded in 2015 to make hostels and paying guest accommodations less restrictive for women students. Narwal and Kalita, arrested last year in May in connection with the communal riots in north east Delhi and in judicial custody presently, are lodged in Central Jail-6 of Tihar.
On the issue of vaccination of the inmates, the prison department told the court that at present only 12 inmates in Tihar’s Central Jail-6 were over the age of 45 years and they have been vaccinated.