Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 3: Kerala native Jatan, lodged in a jail in Jammu, heard the voice of his wife and minor daughter for the first time in nearly four years-thanks to the authorities introducing a first-of-its-kind prison inmate calling system, which allows prisoners to make long-distance calls.
He is facing charges under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and lodged in district jail Amphalla, which is the first prison in Jammu and Kashmir to get the facility along with modern interview rooms on the occasion of 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
Chief Justice High Court Gita Mittal inaugurated the facilities in presence of DGP (prisons) V K Singh and other senior civil and police officers. A total of 587 prisoners are lodged in Amphalla jail in the city.
Facing imprisonment thousands of kilometers away from his home town, Jatan was the first to utilise the inmate calling facility and he talked to his daughter who was just two months old when he was arrested in Jammu.
“My parents have visited me a few times over the past three-and-a-half years but this facility has reunited me with my wife and daughter, and I am very thankful to the prison authorities for providing such a facility to us,” Jatan said after talking to his family for 10 minutes.
Jatan, who was working as a salesman at a jeweller shop in his city before his arrest, has now become a painter taking advantage of the efforts being made by the jail authorities for the reformation of inmates through different vocational training programmes and educational courses.
He said when Kerala was recently hit by floods, he was very much worried and the only contact with his family was through his lawyer but he too was not available all the time.
“With this facility, not only we can know the welfare of our families back home, but we can also contact our lawyer to know the progress of our cases,” Jatan said.
The DGP (prisons) said the inmate calling system was set up by Indus, a firm based in Ambala (Haryana), free of cost but the users would be charged an economical amount which will generate revenue for the firm.
“This is part of the continuous efforts to provide better facilities to the prisoners so that they come out as totally reformed persons and contribute to society and the nation in a positive way,” he said.
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