Ghaziabad police can breathe easy, if plans to connect the city’s Dasna Jail with the district court through video-conferencing comes through.

Reeling under a shortage of staff, the police say the proposed video-conferencing facility would take care of escorting undertrials from the high-security prison to the district court regularly. Notably, there have been several cases in which undertrials have managed to make their escape during the transit.

Sources said besides Dasna, the ambitious project of installing video-conferencing will also be initiated in Kanpur, Mirzapur and Varanasi jails.

Dasna prison superintendent V K Singh said the proposal is being thought over by senior authorities. Sources said it is at an advanced stage.

The administration claims video-conferencing will be treated as e-courts and would relieve the police of the burden of ferrying jail inmates to court. “The proposal is very promising and we would welcome any such decision,” Singh said.

There are around 4,000 inmates, including undertrials, lodged in Dasna Jail, and authorities believe that at any given time, between 400 and 600 undertrails have to be commuted regularly to the district court for attendance.

“We already have a shortage of personnel and the process of producing these undertrails in court eat further into our manpower,” a senior police officer said. “If implemented, the video-conferencing facility will solve this problem.”

Suresh Chand, jail superintendent of Varanasi Central Jail, said a lot of risk is involved while escorting undertrials to the court and bringing them back safely, and a posse of police personnel are required for the job.

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