Bhopal Central jail staff stamps minors' faces as entry record

Bhopal: In a shocking inhuman act, two minors — a boy and a girl — were stamped on their faces by the staff of the Bhopal Central jail, as record of their entry into the prison. The children had gone there to meet an undertrial, a close relative of them, to 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 it. The officials responsible for the incident will be taken to task,” state minister for jail Kusum Mehedele said on Tuesday.

“It is a horrible thing to happen. The prison staff that stamped the entry seal on the minors’ faces were oblivious of the fact that this would leave a impact in their mind for the rest of their life. 

“We have sought a report from the jail authorities in connection with the incident,” Dr Raghavendra, chairman of state commission for children, said.

The jail authorities however described the stamping incident as an unintentional goof up which might have occurred ‘inadvertently in the wake of surge in visitors’ to the jail on the occasion of the Raksha Bandhan.

“The seal might have been put mistakenly on their faces of the two children as over 8,500 people, mostly women and children, visited the jail for Raksha Bandhan. 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 the jail inmates.

The additional director general (ADG) (jail) G.R. Meena, however, said the jail manuals did not provide for stamping an entry seal on a visitor’s body. 

However, at the jail it has been a practice to put a seal on the visitor’s hands at the time of entry.