Bihar Government to hold Special Jail Darbar in all Prisons

Bihar Government plans to hold Jail Darbar in all prisons to redress the demands and hear issues faced by Prisoners. It would also record voices of all prisoners through an advanced speech recognition technology.

“With these initiatives, Bihar will become the first state in the country to modernise prisons,” Inspector General of Police (Prisons) Anand Kishore told IANS.

He said the speech technology would help detect and curb crime by allowing police to match voice samples of suspects with those in the archives.

He said the concept of Bandi Darbar (prisoner assembly) to redress grievances of prisoners was also innovative.

“District magistrates have been asked to hold the sessions every two months,” Kishore said.

He said the two plans would be implemented after the new jail manual replaced the existing one formulated in 1924.

The National Informatics Centre is also developing software for computerisation of the state’s prisons and upload all data on computers.

Kishore said all important information on prisoners, including crime history, date of prison entry, date of production in court and wages earned in jail would be fed into the computers besides records of visitors to jails.

Visitors would also have to get their photos clicked and fingerprints scanned.

Bihar has eight central jails, 31 district jails and 17 sub-jails with a combined capacity of over 33,000 inmates.