Maharashtra Jails To Use Drones To Prevent Fights Among Inmates

Authorities at Maharashtra's Nashik jail have started using drones to keep a check on prisoners and prevent fights among them. Earlier in April Maharashtra prison department had procured 12 drones with cameras and a night vision facility to aid in the monitoring of security at some major jails in the state.

Two objectives are sought to be fulfilled by using drones- first to keep an eye on inmates in the jails and the other to protect jail properties from theft, officials said.

The drones will be used at Maharashtra's eight central prisons of Yerawada, Kolhapur, Harsul (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar), Nashik Road, Thane, Taloja, Nagpur and Amravati, officials had earlier said.

Drones will also be given to the two open prisons of Visapur (Ahmednagar) and Morshi (Amrawati) and to two district prisons at Chandrapur and Kalyan, the officials added.

Many instances of clashes, some of theme lethal have been reported in the past among inmates across various jails across the country. The latest among them which grabbed media attention was the murder of gangster Tillu Tajpuriya by members of a rival gang inside Delhi's Tihar jail.

Tillu Tajpuriya was murdered on May 2 and the entire incident was being captured on the CCTV installed in the prison. The prison guards allegedly mostly remained as mute spectators of the murder.

Following Tillu Tajpuriya's murder as many as 99 prison officials of Tihar jail were transferred. The action came after CCTV footage of the killing of Tillu Tajpuriya surfaced, which showed that fellow inmates continued stabbing the prime accused of the Rohini Court shootout in front of uniformed personnel, who did not intervene.

The police personnel could be seen standing near Tillu Tajpuriya, lying on the floor, and watching three men stabbing the gangster with weapons, fashioned out of lockup grills.

Later, nine Tihar Jail officials, including the assistant superintendent, were suspended in this matter.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)