Police never informed about those involved in pushing mobiles inside prisons: Punjab minister

Punjab Jails Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa on Tuesday said the state police never informed his department about involvement of some people in pushing mobile phones in prisons.

The minister was responding to a calling attention notice by AAP MLAs Saravjit Kaur Manuke and Aman Arora on the concluding day of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha.

The AAP legislators in a calling attention notice sought to draw attention notice of the jails minister towards "lawlessness" in state jails.

Randhawa informed the House that a total of 576 mobile phones had been recovered from different jails in the last six months.

"But what is unfortunate that the police never informed us who and how these mobile phones, which have been handed over to it after recovery from inmates, reached jails. They never tell us who were using these mobiles. I should know it so I can take action against if any jail official involved in it," Randhawa informed the House.

He informed the House that a sum of Rs 11 crore had been sanctioned for installing mobile phone jammers in the state.

"The department is replacing already installed 3G/2G jammers with jammers capable of dealing with 2G/3G/4G/5G technologies," he further said.

He said his department had proposed to set up an intelligence wing of police in different jails.

On strengthening security of jails, the minister said that the Ministry of Home Affairs has approved four companies of the CRPF which would be deployed in different jails.

For effective surveillance of jail inmates, 700 CCTV cameras have been installed at strategic locations in jails and 3,000 more would be installed in phased manner, he said.