Kathmandu, January 2
Central Jail, the oldest prison in the country, at Jagannathdewal in Kathmandu is struggling without enough space so much so that it is forced to house more than double prisoners its actual capacity.
At present, it houses 3,448 jailbirds against its capacity of 1,500, according to the prison administrator Ishwori Prasad Pandey.
Established in the 1910s, there are three blocks (centre, Bhadra and women) for prisoners. The total jailbirds in the prison include 14 juveniles and 258 foreign nationals.
There are 1,902 inmates in the centre section, 1,122 in Bhadra, and 424 in women.
At the moment, 250 security people have been mobilised at the Central Jail.
Bearing in mind the increasing congestion issue in the Central Jail, the government on April 3, 2014, decided to shift the Central Jail to Nuwakot. Significant progress, however, is yet to be made about the relocation.
As said by the Department of Prison Management, presently, there are 74 jails in 72 districts across the country. Many of them are already reported overcrowded.
Kathmandu and Dang each have two jails while Bhaktapur, Bara, Dhanusha, Nawalpur and Rukum East do not have any prisons.
The nationwide number of inmates and detainees stands at around 25,000.
