Uttar Pradesh jail officials seek cow's help to transform prisoners

Redeeming convicts

Inspired, perhaps,  by the importance of serving the cows, officials at the Central Jail in UP’s Bareilly town, about 250 km from here, have decided to seek the help of the cows to “transform” the “prisoners— many of them hard core criminals.”

The jail officials have bought  nine cows from Punjab at a cost of Rs 1.5 lakh brought to the jail. The jail houses around 3,000 prisoners, of whom  95 per cent are Hindus,  senior jail superintendent B R Verma, told Deccan Herald.

A majority of the prisoners are in the jail on charges of  murders and kidnappings.
“The prisoners will be deployed on duty to serve the cows very soon. They will be serving the cows in turn,” Verma said. The Hindu mythology says that serving the cows could “change the heart of a criminal also.”

“While the young prisoners will get an opportunity to correct themselves, the older ones, many of whom virtually on death bed, will get an opportunity to have ‘darshan’ of the cows in their last days,” he added. He said Jail  Inspector General Sulkhan Singh had okayed the plan.

Incidently, it was Singh who had earlier decided to allow the prisoners to appear for professional and university examinations inside the jail.

Verma, however, made it clear that the prisoners would not get to drink the milk of the cows.

“Only the sick and weak prisoners will be given the milk,” he said.