In a unique initiative for women inmates of prisons whom some families refuse to meet considering 'social norms', the Maharashtra State Prison Department has decided to provide them a video-calling facility. They will be able to speak to and see their kin who shy from meeting them. The facility will begin at the Yerawada Central Jail in Pune and then will be operated in Maharashtra. At present there are more than 398 women inmates at the Yerawada Central Jail, of which around 120 are serving imprisonment sentences, two are capital punishment convicts, and the rest are undertrials.

Illustration/Uday Mohite