Kolkata, Sep 11 (PTI) West Bengal correctional services department has begun the official procedure to send back around 650 Bangladeshi prisoners who have completed their terms and are lodged in various prisons.
This is among the several measures taken by the department to prevent crowding in jails in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The process to send back the Bangladeshi prisoners, who had completed their tenures to their country has started.
The official process between the state home affairs department and external affairs ministry has started recently. Most of these prisoners had completed their tenure few months ago, but we could not start the process due to the COVID-19 situation and the lockdown, a senior official of the department.
According to sources in the correctional services department there are around 950 Bangladeshi prisoners in various jails across the state. About 650 of them have already completed their prison terms.
It will also help us to stop crowding in West Bengal prisons. Already three prisoners have died of COVID-19 in the past few months. So we are taking all steps at our disposal to reduce the overcrowding, he said.
After the pandemic began in March this year the department had started facilitating bail and parole of inmates as part of the efforts to prevent crowding in jails.
Various courts of the state have granted bail or parole to more than 3000 prison inmates.
The department had since the last week of March preparing the list of inmates eligible for parole and bail and had forwarded them to the courts.
There are around 60 prisons in West Bengal housing nearly 25,000 inmates. Close to 7,000 inmates are convicts and the rest are under trial prisoners.
