To control drug smuggling, underworld gangs:

Special intelligence and security division set up in prisons

Chaminda Perera

The Prisons Department has set up a special Intelligence and Security Division to prevent drug smuggling and the operations of underworld gangs from the prisons. This elite division is empowered to search the prison inmates and Prisons Department officials including the jailers.

According to Prisons Chief Major General V.R. Silva this unit will carry out surprise raids on the prison cells to prevent the entry of unwanted items such as mobile phones into prisons.

"Over 1000 persons recruited to the department are being given intensive training over the control of drug trafficking and operations of underworld gangs from prisons.

He said the Department officials have found more than 18 mobile phones in the possession of prison inmates and this situation could be averted when the Special Intelligence and Security Division goes into full operation.

We have received information that the inmates have resorted to various tactics to smuggle drugs such as heroin to the prisons.

It is reported that relatives and friends who visit these prison inmates regularly are responsible for bringing various unauthorised things to the prisons, he said.

These relatives and friends will also be throughly checked by the officials of this Division, he said. The Prisons Commissioner said the department has taken a number of initiatives to ease congestion in prisons.

"More than 15,000 people are serving sentences in various Prisons in the country while another 15,000 unconvicted are in remand custody," he said.

He said the department is in the process of identifying the prison inmates who have been convicted of drug addiction and they will be sent to the Pallekelle and several other open prisons for rehabilitation.

The Prisons Commissioner General said the department will develop the infrastructure of these open prisons to give more accommodation to prisoners of this nature.

"This move will also ease congestion in the main prisons at Welikada, Mahara and Bogambara," he said. Major General Silva categorically denied media reports that the department is giving preferential treatment to the wife of SSP Vass Gunawardena who is a suspect in the alleged assault on a student at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology at Malabe.

"The inmates in remand prison are treated equally irrespective of their position in society," he said.

This suspect in question is sharing the common toilet and enjoys the same facilities that other remand prisoners enjoy, the Prisons Commissioner stressed.