Election Commission appoints 15 expenditure observers in Punjab
Chandigarh, The Punjab Prisons Department has segregated gangsters from other criminals by housing them in special high-security zones in jails. Of the 250 gangsters lodged in various prisons across the state, 35 are listed as hardcore criminals.
This is being seen as a major policy shift from the earlier practice of lodging gangsters in separate barracks, where most of them lorded over other inmates.
After chairing a meeting of jail heads today, ADGP (Prisons) Rohit Choudhary said the latest move would prevent gangsters from mingling with other criminals and terrorists, as happened in the Nabha security jailbreak incident where gangsters escaped with Khalistan Commando Force head Harminder Singh Mintoo.
High-security zones have been created in all nine Central prisons (Patiala, Ludhiana, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur, Ferozepur, Faridkot, Bathinda, Amritsar and Gurdaspur) and the Nabha high-security prison, he said. “Members of various gangs would be kept in separate zones so they do not interact or clash with members of others groups. These zones will have electronic surveillance facility and metal detectors,” he added.
In the first phase, construction and installation of barbed fences has been undertaken at 10 jails for creating high-security zones. These zones would have signal jammers that could block even 4G-enabled phones.
