Cuttack: Choudwar Circle Jail has come up with a dedicated Psychiatric Hospital to treat mentally ill inmates.
The 80-bed Psychiatric Hospital constructed at the cost of over Rs.1 crore was inaugurated by Director General of Prisons Santosh Kumar Upadhyay on 26 December.
Besides having accommodation facilities for 80 mentally ill inmates, the Psychiatric Hospital has also 6 high security cells for management of violent and aggressive patients.
“Earlier, prisoners suffering from mental illness were being taken to SCB Medical College and Hospital for treatment. Now, exclusively, the mentally ill prisoners have been kept in the block from which the Psychiatric Hospital is functioning for better monitoring of their mental illness by an expert,” said Choudwar Jail Superintendent Subhakanta Mishra.
At present, the Circle Jail has total 924 inmates and of them as many as 74 inmates are suffering from mental illness.
Due to excess number of mentally ill inmates, there were problems in providing necessary treatment to them. Now the problem has been solved with setting up the Psychiatric Hospital and they all are now being treated inside the jail premises.
Only critical cases will be referred to SCB Mental Health Institute, Mr.Mishra informed.
Mr.Upadhyay who inspected different wings and activities of Choudwar Jail however stressed on augmentation of the jail food processing unit.
DG Prisons said “considering the mushrooming of different food adulterated unit, we have planned to enhance the capacity of production of different food materials by the inmates and their marketing by setting up stalls at different places”.
This will help in increasing revenue beside enhancing inmates’ income and production of pure food items,Mr.Upadhyay said.
“While steps are being taken to increase the production and marketing of Mustard Oil prepared by the jail inmates, effort is on for marketing of Atta(flour) which is now being prepared by the inmates and used in making breads for the inmates. We have further decided to go for preparing pure turmeric powder and Besan by the inmates at Choudwar Jail Food Processing Unit,” said DG Prisons, Mr.Upadhyay.