West Bengal preparing to send back 650 Bangladeshis
The West Bengal state government has started the official procedure to send back 650 Bangladeshis who have completed their sentences but are still languishing in different jails in the state.
The process is part of several measures taken by the West Bengal Correctional Services Department to prevent crowding in jails amid the coronavirus pandemic, reports our New Delhi correspondent.
"The process to send back Bangladeshi prisoners, who have completed their tenure, to their country has started. The official process involving the state home department and the External Affairs Ministry begun recently. Most of these prisoners have completed their sentence tenure a few months ago but we could not start the process due to the pandemic and lockdown," a senior official of the department said.
According to Correctional Services department sources, there are around 950 Bangladeshi prisoners in various jails across West Bengal, out of whom about 650 have served their sentence.
"It will also help us stop crowding of West Bengal's prisons. Three prisoners have died due to Covid-19 in the last few months, so we are taking all possible steps to reduce the overcrowding," the official said. After the pandemic began in March this year, the state correctional home department started facilitating bail and parole of inmates as part of an effort to prevent crowding in jails.
Various courts of the state have granted more than 3,000 inmates bail or parole. Since the last week of March, the department has been preparing a 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. Of them, close to 7,000 are convicts, and the rest are under- trial prisoners.
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