Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today took a strong note of the Gurdaspur central jail violence yesterday and called a high-level meeting next week to review security in the state's prisons.
The meeting of police and Home Department officials has been called in the wake of the frequent incidents of violence and clashes in the state's jails since the past several years.
The chief minister has directed a review of the security conditions in the state's prisons and promised sweeping reforms to eliminate the rot that had allegedly set in the jails during the past 10 years of misrule of the erstwhile Badal-led regime.
At the meeting next week, the state government will review the recently submitted report by the high-powered committee on jail reforms and will initiate measures to improve the prison administration in Punjab.
"Captain Amarinder has ordered the concerned officers to deal with the situation in Gurdaspur jail as they deemed fit and ensure that law and order was restored in the prison without delay," the chief minister's Media Advisor Raveen Thukral said in a statement here today.
Expressing grave concern over the frequent violent clashes in Punjab's prisons, Amarinder said he had been in touch with senior police, prison and intelligence officials since the violence broke out in the Gurdaspur prison.
Six prisoners including two terrorists were freed by a group of armed men from the high-security Nabha jail in Patiala district in November last year.
"We have put up a plan on how to improve things in the prisons of Punjab. The chief minister is keen that the state of affairs of our prisons should improve. All things will be discussed in detail at the meeting next week," ADGP (Prisons) Rohit Chowdhary said.
Talking about the Gurdaspur incident, Chowdhary said that restraint was shown by the staff on duty, who did not cause any injury to any of the inmates even though they were forced to fire in the air to contain the miscreants.
"A case of assault on jail personnel, rioting, destruction of public property has been registered against 10-15 inmates who have been identified," Chowdhary told PTI, adding that it was a group of 100 inmates out of the total 900, who created trouble.
In his preliminary report on the Gurdaspur incident,
Punjab Home Secretary N S Kalsi said the situation was resolved after police's intervention on the intervening night of March 24 and 25.
The report says the incident occurred when a few gangsters, undergoing trial in several murder cases, incited inmates of one of the barracks to confront the staff after assaulting three jail warders on duty.
Kalsi said the incident was the result of years of alleged neglect of the jail administration, about 50 per cent of shortfall in the sanctioned staff strength, poor administrative structure and lack of equipment in the state's prisons.
Since 2011, there have been more than a dozen such incidents of rioting and violent clashes in various jails across the state, the report said.
Some of the major incidents cited in the report include the ones at the Modern Jail, Kapurthala (2011), Modern Jail Faridkot (2013, 2016 and 2016), Central Jail Hoshiarpur (2013), Security Jail Nabha (2016), Dist Jail Mansa (2013), Central Jail Bathinda (2010, 2015,2016, 2016) and District Jail Barnala (2015, 2015).
Thukral said the chief minister has called for detailed reports on all these cases before the meeting next week.
