In a delay on the part of the authorities, the Bhondsi prison will have to wait longer for the mobile jammers in the jail premises. The jammers were to be installed by the end of March 2016, however, the department is yet to finalise which jammers will be installed in the prison premise.
The authorities had taken the decision to install the jammers in the 40 acre area of Bhondsi jail in November last year after mobile phones and SIM cards were recovered from the jail premise.
DG (prisons) Parminder Rai had announced that the jammers will be installed by end of March to control mobile menace in Bhondsi jail. Haryana state prison department had planned to install around 14 jammers which were said to be approved by Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW). Rai had announced that jammers were to be connected to all telecom service providers in the country to ensure that every mobile connection could be traced.
According to the information received, a Hyderabad-based company was to supply the jammers at a cost of Rs six crore, as a part of the pilot project. If successful in Gurgaon, the project was to be replicated in other state prisons too.
Smuggling of mobile phones and SIM cards have been a headache for the jail authorities for a year now. For around 2,100 prisoners in Bhondsi jail, there are only 225 jail officials. Therefore, it becomes difficult to monitor the possessions of the inmates and also when something is sneaked inside the jail. As a result, around 96 mobile phones were recovered from Bhondsi jail in 2015, while, 35 mobile phones have been recovered till March 8 this year.
A total of 71 SIM cards were recovered from the jail premise last year, while 38 SIM cards have been recovered in 2016 till now. Despite strict checking by the jail authorities and regular raids by Gurgaon Police, the regular recoveries shows that the mobile phones are still being smuggled into the jail.
Most of these items are found in common areas like washrooms, gaps in the walls, gardens etc. Therefore, it makes it difficult for the checking party to identify the owners.