Jail authorities will conduct detailed profiling of visiting religious preachers, the ministry of home affairs (MHA) has directed all state and prison director generals (DGs). The top officials have further been asked that among the religious preachers visiting jails, the ones with liberal ideology should be encouraged, CNN-News18 has learnt.
The directions, efforts on which are already underway at central jails in the majority of states, have been issued at a time when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has already unleashed an intensified crackdown against a possible nexus between criminals and gangsters with terrorists.
On similar lines, earlier this year, the MHA asked prison authorities to focus on organising special de-radicalisation sessions in all jails on a regular basis. This is to be done with the help of experts in behavioural training to bring back the “radicalised” inmates to the mainstream. The ministry also suggested the segregation of other inmates from those with a higher risk of propagating radicalised ideology.
CNN-News18 has learnt that while a number of prisons across the country claim to have implemented measures to counter radicalisation within jails, the remaining are in the process of developing infrastructure to be able to abide by the directive.
This, however, is not the first time when the ministry has underscored indoctrination happening within jails. Previously, the MHA had communicated to states that radicalisation is among one of the most significant challenges faced by the jail authorities, often a precursor to terrorism.
In one of its letters to the heads of jails and to state police chiefs in 2018, the MHA even stressed that radicalisation of prisoners inside jails is emerging as an internal security challenge. “There have been inputs indicative of jail inmates getting radicalised and becoming part of a wider radicalised network. Some of the characteristics that make prisoners vulnerable to radical ideologies include alienation, predisposition to violent behaviour, anti-social attitude and a need for protection or association,” the document reads.
Today, most of the measures being implemented by jail authorities include what the home ministry had then suggested as anti-radicalisation methods: training of prison staff to identify the radicalised, videoconferencing facilities in prisons for hardcore elements to bring down their interaction with others, no special privileges to radical elements, ensure no nexus is developed between gangsters, drug smugglers, Naxal elements, and insurgents lodged in prisons with the radical elements, and taking up de-radicalisation programmes in prisons through qualified counsellors and religious figures.
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