Meat goes off menu:Parappana Agrahara jail inmates fume

Meat-eating inmates at the Parappana Agrahara Central prison have a bone to pick with jail wardens. With non-vegetarian dishes, including eggs, off the menu prisoners are having to make do with vegetarian dishes.

Among the 5,000 undertrials and convicts, 3,500 to 4,000 inmates consume meat and eggs every week, getting their weekly quota of mutton and chicken dishes which alternate every week.

Non-vegetarian dishes and eggs are served every Friday. Inmates who do not eat eggs are served bananas while those who don’t consume meat are served sweets.

But over the past three months, meat eating inmates are having to make do with bananas and sweets instead of eggs and mutton/chicken — with the exception of foreign and hospital prisoners, who are being served eggs as they are on the hospital diet — due to a costly error on the part of the meat contractor.

On December 8 2018, the meat contractor, Suresh Babu, was arrested inside the prison premises for sneaking in six smartphones wrapped in a cloth in a goods vehicle. The result: Babu lost a ‘meaty’ contract and prisoners their weekly supply of meat and eggs.

Babu, who bagged the meat contract for the first time, claimed that someone had set him up so that he loses the contract to another person. Later, Babu managed to obtain bail and walked out of the prison. Unfortunately, it was not business as usual for Babu.

As he had violated the contract norms, Babu’s meat supplying contract was annulled and the prison department floated a fresh tender for meat and egg supply. Prison sources said the tender is almost through and the meat supply will hopefully resume by the end of April.

That means inmates have to endure a few more weeks without non-vegetarian dishes; something they are not happy with.