Covid test must for accused before their judicial remand in Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: Alarmed by the second wave of Covid-19, the state prisons directorate on Thursday asked those authorised to make arrests, including the police, vigilance, excise, forest and CBI to subject the accused persons to RT-PCR tests before producing them in courts for their judicial remand.


This apart, the directorate has requested the Orissa high court to advise the lower courts not to remand the accused in judicial custody, if the punishment of the offences committed by the arrested persons is less than seven years of imprisonment.

“Anybody (accused) found to be

Covid

positive immediately after their arrest should be sent to Covid care centres for treatment following the court’s order. The accused should be shifted to judicial custody (jails) only after they recover from the infection. Covid positive patients should not be kept in jails,” Santosh Upadhyay, the director general of police (prisons and correctional services), said.

The directorate has laid stress on compliance with the standard operating procedure (SOP), which was prepared by the

state home department

in August last year. According to the SOP, only the asymptomatic accused persons (to be declared by the medical officers) shall be remanded in jails after they test negative for Covid. The newly remanded persons having Covid-l9 negative reports shall be kept in isolation or quarantine wards of prisons, the SOP had said.

The chief district medical officers (CDMOs) will depute the medical staff for random tests of prisoners at designated places (to be decided by the district administrations). The DCPs and SPs will provide police escort during transport of the Covid-infected prisoners to hospitals, the SOP had said.

The

home department

said police guards should be deployed in Covid hospitals for the safe custody of the virus-hit undertrial prisoners (UTPs). The police escorts should wear personal protective equipment. After the discharge of the UTPs, the police guards shall be quarantined for 14 days (either in home or Covid care centre). The guards will undergo a Covid-19 test on the 14th day, the SOP had said.

As against the capacity of 19,824, altogether 19,096 inmates were lodged in the 86 jails across the state till the end of January 31 this year. The jails are the most vulnerable places for the transmission of the virus. Around 1,591 inmates of 44 jails were infected with the virus. While 1,319 of them had recovered, seven of them had succumbed to it.

Though the prisons authorities had taken steps to decongest the jails between April and July last year following a Supreme Court directive to states, the situation was back to square one with most jails being packed with undertrial prisoners.

The number of jail inmates has gone up with an increase in arrests across the state over the last few months. The successive lockdowns to prevent Covid-19, followed by shutdowns and growing infection among a large number of police personnel, had put the brakes on crackdowns on criminal activities and arrests earlier.


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