Telephone facilities in Tamil Nadu prisons
Posted on: 16/Dec/2013 2:53:23 PM
Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa inaugurated the Telephone facilities in Tamil Nadu prisons. The prison department has installed telephone facilities for inmates at Puzhal, Coimbatore, Salem, Trichy, Palayamkottai, Madurai, Vellore and Cuddalore central prisons and special prisons for women in Puzhal, Vellore Trichy and a Borstal school in Pudukottai. Prison officials believe that the facilities would control the smuggling of contraband items.
The state government had allotted 1.58cr for setting up telephone facilities in central prisons in the state. As many as eight telephone booths were installed at Coimbatore central prison. The women annex building, sub jail, Wallmedu, prison hospital and clothing section are each getting one telephone booth and three booths were installed at the tower block. Convicted prisoners are lodged at the tower block, remand prisoners are lodged at the subjail and hard core remand prisoners are lodged at Wallmedu.
The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) installed the telephone booth facilities in the prison. Each prisoner can talk up to 30 minutes per month. Every ten days they can make a call to their family or lawyer for a maximum of ten minutes. Prisoners are allowed to call three pre determined numbers including their lawyer.
The calls are recorded by prison authorities to avoid misuse of the facility. The prisoner makes a call by affixing his thumb imprint on a bio metric enabled system.
