Rajasthan jail inmates can now communicate with family members through video call

Amid a nationwide lockdown to end the spread of novel coronavirus, the Rajasthan Prisons Department has introduced an initiative to enable jail inmates in the state communicate with their family members through video call.

The department introduced the e-Mulakat initiative on Wednesday to facilitate family members of the inmates seek appointment online for physical meeting as well as for a video call.

The project was launched early in view of lockdown so that the prisoners can see and talk to their family members through video call at a time when there cannot be any physical meeting.

"We launched the project initially in nine central jails of the state, including Jaipur. In the next few days, this facility will be available for district jails as well," DIG, Jail, Vikas Kumar told PTI.

"We collected the data of visitors and worked out the project in the last three months with technical support from NIC (National Informatics Centre). There are nearly 20,000 inmates and the average of visitors for each prisoner is 10. This way, nearly 2 lakh people are likely to be benefitted with this initiative," he said.

Kumar said registered visitors will have to submit a form, fill certain details on the website of jail department and after verification, a notification about date and time of the video call and a link will be sent to the email-id of the visitor.

"By opening the link on the given date and time, a video call with the prisoner can be made," he said, adding appointment for physical meeting in jails can also be fixed through this system.

"Since there is lockdown at present, this initiative will help jail inmates and their family members to see and talk to each other through video call," the DIG added.