Bhubaneswar: At a time when government continues to insist on maintaining Covid appropriate beahviour to arrest the rising trend of coronavirus cases, some inmates at the Jharpada jail in Bhubaneswar allegedly threw the pandemic rules to the wind.
The violation of Covid guidelines by the prisoners came to light after some video clips showing their group dance and song programme went viral on social media platforms, exposing the callousness of the jail authorities to the present danger.
As per reports, three such video clips are doing rounds on social networking sites. In the first one, some inmates are seen sitting together in groups and singing Bhajans while smoking ganja.
In the second clip, some prisoners are seen shaking legs together to the tunes of some trendy numbers.
Similarly, a jail employee is seen receiving something from an inmate in a separate video clip.
What concerns is the fact that no one including the jail employee was wearing mask or maintaining physical distance during the pandemic situation.
On the other hand, jail authorities said that the incidents ( and video clips) were of pre-covid times.
“These were old videos which might have been shot during pre-covid period. No android phones are allowed inside the jail premises and meeting of inmates with relatives has been restricted currently due to Covid-19,” said DIG (Prison) Subhakant Mishra.
He further claimed that it could be a conspiracy to divert attention from ’Operation Clean’ which has been launched to rid prisons of unwanted activities.
Special squad has been formed to intensify raids at various jails to check entry of unauthorized articles, he added.
“Some mobile phones were buried under ground, which were dug out by our staff. If any of our employees are found helping prisoners access to android mobile phones, action would be initiated against him,” he added.