Fridays violence a wake-up call for jail authorities

Following Fridays incident of rioting inside the Sabarmati Central Jail,the jail authorities have decided to adopt certain preventive measures to check the occurrence of any such incident in future.

According to the top jail officials,they are planning to equip the jail staff with helmets,lathis,gas guns and mega phones to tackle such incidents. There are also plans to shift some of the hardened criminals to other jails in the state,said Inspector General (Prisons) Keshav Kumar,adding,We are planning a number of long and short-term precautionary steps.

On Friday,nearly 10 jail officials were injured when some undertrials attacked them.

The jail staff had to resort to lathicharge in which at least eight inmates were injured.

The violence broke out when the undertrials were sitting on a hunger strike to protest against the alleged atrocities committed by the jail officials on them.

When some officials approached them to end the strike,the latter attacked them following a heated exchange.

A police complaint of rioting was filed against 56 undertrials. According to the jail officials,those on the hunger strike had been forcing other prisoners to join them.

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Six of the 56 accused are lodged in the jail in connection with the July 26 Ahmedabad serial blasts.

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