12 out of 24 CCTV cameras do not function with wires eaten by rats; SIM cards smuggled in at random, and more prisoners than it can handle

Even as the numbers of incidents of assault and deaths have been frequent across the two old jails and the new one at Colvale, the SDA jail story is one of utter neglect. It is a security disaster waiting to happen, on a daily basis. Herald spent the week speaking to former jail officials, guards as well as some of those who have actually spent time “inside”.

It is clear that gangsters freely manage to operate and spread terror because of easy access to mobile phones, used to control activities including making demands for money. A jail staff told Herald off duty that it there are not too many handsets but very many sim cards “Everyone walks in with SIM cards and then the ones with handsets are approached. And everything has a price”

The jail authorities have moved several proposals to install mobile jammers. “The former IG prisons Elvis Gomes took a lot of initiatives to get mobile jammers in place but this proposal still hasn’t been cleared. But as a senior government official, involved with prison operations remarked, “The government isn’t interested in outing jammers in Sada jail.

Speaking to Herald, the Superintendent of SADA jail, Gaurish Sankhwalkar, said “Bad things are happening in the jail and we hold the prisoners completely responsible. Earlier there have been many inquiries. But we have rectified things. A three tier security system is now in place. Against a capacity of 195, there were 400 prisoners in Sada jail. Since the Colvale jail is operational, we have shifted almost 300 prisoners there. We now have only 137 male prisoners and 34 female prisoners. Earlier there were many groups (of gangsters) in jail, many of them murder accused. We have split those groups. Group members, who remain in Sada, have been put in separate cells”

However, security infrastructure is crumbling. Take for instance the functioning of CCTV cameras. Of the 24 cameras only 12 are functioning. The wires of the other twelve have been eaten by rats. When the jail authorities moved an urgent request for pest control to be done, it was turned down. And guess what the justification was. The prisoners would eat the pesticides, not the rats and die. So now the 12 functioning CCTV cameras are at the mercy of the destructive rodents, who have no fear of being “pest controlled”.

This is clearly other side of the Sada jail story. It’s hardly a secret but no one seems to care.