reporter’s notebook - Open air prison becomes a shoppers’ paradise

Udumula Sudhakar Reddy
27th Nov 2008
Now inmates are involved in soap making, weaving, and furniture making.
The Cherlapally open air prison has become a shoppers’ stop for housewives these days. Families from surrounding colonies stop their cars and two-wheelers here on the way home to buy fresh veg etables grown by the jail inmates.
They prefer them to the pesticide-laced vegetables sold in nearby Rythu Bazaars and Sunday markets.
Jail inmates are following organic methods to grow vegetables with minimal use of pesticides. And the rates are comparable with those of Rythu Bazaars.
The prison is not only known for its high quality vegetables but also for milk, meat and poultry products.
It has an area of 128.7 acres in which the inmates are growing vegetables and mango. There are also sheds where around 102 cows, buffaloes and calves are kept.
The sheep grown in the farms are sold at good prices during Bakr-id.
With the government allowing prison authorities to spend more funds on livestock, plans are afoot to buy Jersey cross cows that give 10 litres of milk per day and Murrah buffaloes which give 10 to 12 litres of milk.
The dairy farm supplies 70 to 80 litres of milk per day to the Cherlapally Central Prison and other sister institutions.
Popular cinema has given all of us the impression that prisoners spent all their time breaking huge stones. But this is no longer true.
Now inmates are involved in soap making, weaving, and furniture making apart from horticulture and maintaining dairy farms.
Prisoners who are sentenced for rigorous imprisonment will have to work in the factories as well as farms.
Those who are sentenced to simple imprisonment have to give it in writing that they have volunteered to work.
Each prisoner in open air jail is paid Rs 20 per day. The rate is Rs 15 per day for inmates of closed jails. A prisoner can earn up to Rs 600 per month.