42 Bhopal Central Jail convicts being trained as paramedics

Forty-two prisoners of the Bhopal Central Jail, several of them serving life sentences for murders, are undergoing a paramedical course with authorities claiming that it might be a first-of-its-kind initiative for any jail in the country.

"Forty-two prisoners, including four women inmates, are taking a 3-month paramedical course which started on June 1. I haven't ever heard of prisoners doing this course in any other jail in India," Bhopal Central Jail superintendent Dinesh Nargava told PTI today.

He said that, as part of the paramedical course being conducted for free by Bhopal-based People's University, the 42 prisoners were being trained to dress wounds and administer intravenous therapies among other life-saving measures.

"Most of these trainees are murder convicts serving life imprisonment. Only those who had cleared Class X, had served at least five years of their sentence and had shown good behaviour in jail were chosen for the course," he informed.

The group of 42 convicts attend classes two times a week and get practical training on the other days under the supervision of Dr Premendra Sharma of the Bhopal Central Jail Hospital, Nargava said.