In keeping with the Supreme Court’s order to decongest prisons to curb the Covid-19 spread, on a visit to Thane on Thursday, Maharashtra State Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said that 3,500 prisoners will be released from jails in the district. “Once they come out of the jail, the police administration and Collectorate along with others will ensure that arrangements are made to drop them to their homes. If they live outside the district, they will be escorted to a bus for their homes,” he said at the Thane police Commissionerate. The 3,500 prisoners are part of the 17,000 prisoners announced to be released by the state.
As per the information provided by the prison department, 1,827 convicts, including 121 from five prisons in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region were released on emergency parole. 317 prisoners were released on emergency parole on Thursday. Six each were released from the Byculla jail and Arthur Road jail, 50 from Taloja jail, 48 from Yerawada jail in Pune and the rest who were released were from Nashik, Kolhapur and Gadchiroli among others.
The high-level committee appointed by the Maharashtra government had recommended that around 50 percent inmates – 17,000 of the 35,239 inmates across various prisons in Maharashtra, be released to decongest the prisons. The committee comprises of Bombay High Court Justice AA Sayed, Additional Chief Secretary of Maharashtra Home Department Sanjay Chahande and Maharashtra Director General of Prisons, SN Pandey, reported Mumbai Live.
The Arthur Road jail had recorded about 158 positive Covid-19 cases and one woman at Byculla jail had tested positive for the virus.
On Thursday, the Maharashtra Police informed that 1,001 policemen had tested positive for the virus while the death toll of police personnel succumbing to covid-19 has risen to nine.
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