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In 2016, when the Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt stepped out of the Pune’s Yerawada Central Prison, he had earned a salary of ₹38,000. He worked as a semi-skilled worker while serving a five-year rigorous imprisonment for possessing and destroying a prohibited weapon, an AK-56 rifle, just before the 1993 Mumbai blasts.
Dutt prepared paper bags and spent most of his salary on buying daily-use items from the jail canteen. Dutt’s family was not dependent on his earnings. However, this is not the case with most of the inmates who are the sole breadwinners.
Many prisoners are earning members before landing in jail, and the survival of their families become difficult. In a first of this kind, the Maharashtra government has decided providing loans to jail inmates to take care of their family responsibilities, said State Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil during the scheme’s launch on Monday.
About the scheme
The Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank will provide ₹50,000 loan to each inmate. However, the State would consider raising the amount after reviewing the progress of the scheme’s execution. He insisted that the scheme is not just about providing loans to their families, but to bridge the gap between them. It will also pave the way for inmates’ rehabilitation on their completion of imprisonment term.
Inmates will repay the loan with interest by working in the jail. Yerawada and other jails provide work to inmates for which they receive payments. In Yerawada, the inmates prepare biscuits, furniture, bed linen, carpets, bags, lamps, clothing and other products. These are sold in the open market.
Atulchandra Kulkarni, Inspector General (IG) Prisons and Correctional Services, said, in the pilot scheme, 222 male inmates and seven women were provided with the loan. If the Yerawada experiment succeeds, the scheme will be extended to other jails in the State.
The necessity
One of the inmates who served imprisonment in Sangli jail, and now with his family members, said, the convict’s family suffers a lot at the hands of the society. He said that the entire family receives punishment for the crime committed by one of them. “When I was in the jail after being convicted in a case accused of misusing the cooperative society’s money, my son and wife actually starved,” he said, adding that the convicts and their families will benefit because of these schemes and also help them to find a new path in life.
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