Monday, November 4, 2002		Feature

E-mail from Tihar jail

SOME 300 foreign inmates of the Tihar jail in the Indian capital finally have a speedy link home, with the authorities allowing them to e-mail their family and friends.

"The e-mail facility was introduced because it was seen that while the Indian inmates get a chance to meet their families and friends twice a week for half an hour and receive letters too, the foreign inmates have little contact with their loved ones," a Tihar official told IANS.

He said the foreign inmates, most of who are from South Asia, Africa and Europe, feel lonely because there is rarely anyone to see them and the postal service is expensive and slow.

The e-mail facility was the brainchild of Ajay Agrawal, the director general of Tihar, said to be Asia’s largest prison.

The only hitch is that the prisoners will not be allowed anywhere near the computer but asked to pen down the message and hand it over to prison authorities.

"The inmate writes a message on paper and passes it to his jail superintendent, who checks it to see if any coded message has been sent about delivery of goods or meetings points," said the jail official.

"He also checks whether there are any words sending across a message that could threaten national security or jail security. If he (the official) becomes suspicious, he can deny the prisoner the facility," he said.

The same procedure is followed when an inmate receives e-mail. The letter is scanned before the prisoner gets to see it.

The official said the foreign prisoners are also not allowed to write letters in their own languages. "If the prisoner writes in his own language, we ask him to translate it and then we write the letter in English ourselves if he doesn’t know the language," he said.

Most of the foreign prisoners are awaiting trial in cases of forgery or carrying illicit drugs.

Tihar jail, spread over 400 acres and housing about 12,000 inmates though was built to cater to just 3,700, is slowly trying to turn paperless.

With the help of NGOs, the authorities have started teaching the inmates the basics of computers, but the prisoners are not allowed access to the Internet. The prison official said this was to prevent them from misusing the facility.