Jodhpur: The Rajasthan High Court on Wednesday directed the state government to connect all central and district jails in the state with video-conferencing facility by February 28 next year.
The court gave this direction while disposing a PIL moved by NGO Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative which drew the attention of the court to the fact that undertrial inmates and even those on pre-trial stage could not be produced in court for reasons like non-adequate escort, vehicles or other issues most of the time.
"Besides this the division bench headed by Chief Justice Naveen Kumar Sinha also directed monthly monitoring of health status of jail inmates through a committee headed by the district judge and comprising the district magistrate and the superintendent of police in each district," said Additional Advocate General P R Singh Jodha.
In its PIL, the NGO had pleaded that for want of escort and other required resources for transit of under-trial inmates from jail to the court, about half of the times, these inmates could not be brought to the court on the stipulated dates of hearing, thereby delaying the trial.
"Besides this, same was the situation in case of even for medical checkup or treatment at higher medical centres," said the counsel for the petitioner, Nishant Bora.
"So with this petition, we demanded arrangement of video-conferencing facility in jails to avoid skipping of the court hearing for lack of resources and also the proper medical check-up," Bora said.
On the basis of this plea, the court sought report from the state government during the previous hearing and directed the DGP and DG (Jail) to appear in persons with the reply.
"We produced a report in the court today and apprised that in 22 central and district jails, video-conferencing facility has already been introduced and the remaining jails would be also covered soon," said Jodha.
He also apprised the court about the arrangement of adequate medical facilities in terms of doctors, para-medical staff and the ambulances for these inmates.
Upon this, the court directed the state government to connect all remaining jails by video-conferencing facility by February 28 and also monitoring of the health facilities of the inmates on monthly basis through a committee headed by the district judge along with the district magistrate and the superintendent of police concerned.
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