VIBHA VERMA
[email protected]
PANJIM: One in ten prisoners lodged in the State’s prisons are suffering from mental ailments, according to government statistics. Shockingly almost 81 per cent of these prisoners are lodged in sub-jail at Sada, a facility overlooking Vasco city.
Prison department statistics revealed that Sada sub-jail itself is home to 50 out of total 61 inmates who are suffering from mental ailments.
Prison officials stated that the inmates are being treated in IPHB for mixed personality traits, depression which sometimes results in violence, resulting in harming fellow inmates or prisoners self.
Of the remaining 11 convicts, with a similar history of mental disorder, five are jailed at Aguada and six are undertrials lodged at Mapusa lock-up. Among the 11, two were just recently admitted to IPHB on March 8 and 9.
However, a senior Jail official claimed that in most of these cases, the prisoners pretend they are mentally unstable, in order to try their luck and escape from custody.
Notorious criminal Michael Fernandes, who is known to have escaped from jail in the past and is presently in the Aguada Jail for over a year, has used this modus operandi in the past.
An inmate who created flutters in the State by exposing the alleged drug trade in the highly secured Sada jail premise recently also turned out to be psychologically unstable, as per the sub-jail officials. The undertrial, facing rape charge, had recorded the video of a prisoner boasting about selling narcotics such as cocaine, charas and ganja to the inmates and showed availability of luxuries like television, mobiles and cigarettes in jail.
A local new channel aired the sting operation which was subsequently downplayed by the prison authorities who claimed he had created the scene and is a mentally unstable person.
The Department is awaiting Jail Reforms which will subsequently fall in place hopefully with the commissioning of Colvale Jail, with appointment of full time counselors. For now, there are NGO counselors who spend time studying the
behaviour of a prisoner, but this appears to be woefully inadequate.
“We don’t have full time counselors for now. We get visiting counselors from NGOs working in this field… Once the Colvale Jail is ready, posts will be created for counselors also,” Inspector General of Prisons Jaydev Sarangi told Herald.
The IAS official was quick to add that basic medication and treatment are provided to the prisoners within the four walls of the jail. “The Prisons have medical personnel and facility available in the campus. When there is a need for referral, they are taken outside the premise to government hospitals and if the facility is not available there, then inmates are taken to private hospitals,” he said.
