MADURAI: The state’s prison department has installed information kiosks in Tamil language across 14 prisons, including eight central prisons, said a status report submitted to the Madurai Bench of the Madurai High Court on Friday. The report came after the Madras High Court in January 2023, directed Tamil Nadu and the prison department to install kiosks across prisons in Tamil language, to enable prisoners to access information related to their incarceration.
In January 2023, the court granted compensation to a petitioner, who claimed that his son was kept in illegal detention. The petitioner’s counsel had submitted that this happened because the petitioner’s son was not aware of the acquittal order. He made several recommendations so that such incidents do not happen in future. This included installation of kiosks that support local languages. Subsequently, the court directed the prison department to install information kiosks.
The report stated that earlier, only one kiosk had been installed at the Puzhal central prison. “The National Informatics Center was informed about the issues, the modification has been made, and regional language including Tamil has been added to the kiosk prison e-suite infonet,” added the report.
The prisons department had sanctioned `1.56 crore for installing kiosks at central prisons. Accordingly, kiosk machines were installed across central prisons, special prison for women, and the prison borstal school & district jail in Pudukkottai. Prisoners can access the kiosks to know about their details such as profile, actual date of release, case details, appeals, wages, remission, account details, details of sentences, escape details, punishment details, visitors details, leave/parol, legal aid.