The government has begun freeing a total of 387 life sentence prisoners from different jails who have already spent at least 20 years in imprisonment.
Jail officials said many of these prisoners are murder and rape convicts. Many notorious criminals are also among them, the officials said.
“These prisoners have been selected for release before completion of their terms considering their good behaviour and manners, according to section 579 of the Jail Code,” Brig Gen Ashraful Islam Khan, the inspector general of prisons (IG-Prisons), told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
The IG-Prisons said jail authorities had prepared a list of prisoners for release and the home ministry had approved it.
“Many of the selected prisoners were already released today,” he added.
A few months ago, the government released around 3,000 prisoners from the country’s 68 jails.
The IG-Prisons had said at that time that the 3,000 prisoners had been freed as part of a step to reduce overcrowding in prisons.
The 3,000 had included those convicted for various petty crimes, prisoners with disabilities and older prisoners.
At present around 70,000 prisoners are housed in 68 jails in Bangladesh, which have the capacity to accommodate only about 32,000 prisoners.
Only around 19,000 of the prisoners are convicts and the rest are under trial.
Our correspondent in Rajshahi reported 76 prisoners were released from eight jails in Rajshahi division yesterday.
Tauhidul Islam, the senior superintendent of Rajshahi central jail, said most of the released prisoners were convicted for killing, raping and molestation.
