Untraceable Naroda Gam massacre witness, police escort informs control room

HYDERABAD: The prisons department is having a lot of trouble finding police officers to accompany undertrial defendants to court. In order to address shortages, department representatives approached the police on Thursday and requested that specialized people be deployed to prison facilities, particularly the two central jails at Cherlapalli and Chanchalguda. The superintendents of the Cherlapalli, Chanchalguda, and the special prison for women, as well as the deputy inspector general (DIG) prisons for the Telangana region, M Chandrasekhar, informed police officials about the challenges they face when police escort is occasionally not available to accompany undertrials to court. Finding police escort to take people on trial to court has never been easy for jails. Additionally, this is not the first time that prison administrators have discussed the matter with their colleagues in the police force. The city armed reserve had previously given 90 dedicated soldiers for the Cherlapalli jail and 60 for the Chanchalguda jail to escort undertrials to court when the prisons department brought up the problem with the police. However, police refuse to comply because they are themselves preoccupied elsewhere and the jails need extra staff to transport criminals to court. “Last year, there was an ongoing issue for almost six months; it later improved, but it is difficult for the police to send escort personnel when there are other law and order situations that have to be handled. However, we have explained to police officials that for undertrials to be duly produced in the courts we need more escort personnel,” Chandrasekhar told TOI. Along with representatives from the jails, B Malla Reddy, joint commissioner of City Armed Reserved (CAR), was present at the meeting. Along with having to appear in court, inmates must also be escorted by police when being transferred to the hospital. When asked if the growing population of VIP inmates was affecting the workload, DIG Chandrasekhar responded, “That will anyway be taken care of.”