Bhopal prison staff stamp seal on minors’ faces who came to meet jailed relative

Bhopal: Two minors — a child and a girl — were stamped entry seals on their faces by the prison staff at the Bhopal Central jail here when they went to meet an undertrial, a close relation, and celebrate Raksha Bandhan with him, on Monday.

The incident sparked a public outrage forcing the Madhya Pradesh government to order a probe into it on Tuesday.

“We have ordered a probe into the stamping-on-face incident. I condemn the incident. The officials responsible for the incident will be taken to task,” state minister for jail Kusum Mehedele.

“It is a horrible thing to happen. The prison staff that stamped the entry seals on the two minors’ faces were oblivious of the fact that this would leave a deep impact on their minds the rest of their lives,” he said.

“We have sought a report from the jail authorities in connection with the incident. We may begin a probe into the incident, if the report submitted by the jail authorities is found unsatisfactory,” Dr Raghavendra, chairman of MP state commission for children, said.

The jail authorities, however, described the stamping-seal-on-face as an unintentional goof-up and said it might have been done inadvertently in the wake of a surge in visitors to the jail on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan.

“The seal might have been put mistakenly on the face of a couple of children as over 8,500 people, mostly women and children, visited the jail premises on Raksha Bandhan day. However, we have ordered a probe into the incident,” jail superintendent Dinesh Nargave said. According to him, there is a practice of putting an entry seal on every visitor’s hand in order to distinguish them from jail inmates.

The additional director general (ADG) (jail) G.R. Meena, however, said that the jail manuals did not provide for putting entry seals on visitors’ bodies. But, such a practice has continued.