Last week, it emerged that 86 people lodged at the Anantnag district jail in South Kashmir had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. T...
Last week, it emerged that 86 people lodged at the Anantnag district jail in South Kashmir had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. That included a member of the prison staff, someone who brought supplies to the prison and a labourer, said Anantnag jail superintendent Syroz Ahmad Bhat.
The jail is built for holding 60 people. It currently houses 193, which means about 43% of its inmates have tested positive. “Forty eight of them have been quarantined at a different facility and 38 have been quarantined within the jail,” said Bhat.
Across the country, Assam’s Guwahati Central Jail was in the spotlight after it was found that Akhil Gogoi, a peasant leader and one of the activists arrested for the anti-Citizenship Act protests in December, had tested positive for coronavirus.
As antigen testing concluded in the Guwahati Central Jail this weekend, the total number of Covid-19 infections in the prison ballooned to 438 – three of them prison staff, said Dasarath Das, Assam’s inspector general of prisons. Since the jail houses around 1,000 prisoners, it meant about 43% of its inmates had been infected. All prisoners were tested, Das said.
Of those infected, 154 prisoners are currently being treated in various medical facilities in...
