Times View Will it take a fatal attack, possibly the murder of an undertrial inmate yet to be convicted of any wrongdoing, before the authorities wake up to the need for comprehensive security and surveillance systems in our prisons? Periodic raids and seizures of weapons by police is a reactive measure at best. The fact that weapons continue to be found in prisons show the raids don’t even serve as a deterrent, and point to the likelihood of jailers condoning such infractions. Stringent checks will prevent incarcerated gangsters from running their operations while behind bars.

BENGALURU: The Central Crime Branch on Wednesday seized 37 knives and daggers from Central Prison, Parappana Agrahara, many of them improvised weapons that inmates fashioned from steel plates and spoons .During the raid, which started at 6am and continued for five hours, marijuana and smoking pipes, cellphones and sim cards were found.Joint commissioner of police (crime) Sandeep Patil, who led the raid, said convicts who manage the prison cafeteria pinch plates and spoons and hand them over to other inmates. "They bend, shape and scrape these steel utensils into sharp weapons," another officer said. "Rowdies use the weapons to protect themselves from rival gangs or attack enemies within the prison. Some of the weapons we found were made from stolen gardening tools."Police said the fact that mobile phones and sim cards were seized during the raid indicated that parts of the Central Prison are not covered by its signal jammer and inmates make calls from these spots."Many prisoners have mobile phones smuggled to them in food items and use multiple sim cards to avoid detection," the officer said.CCB carried out the raid on a tip that inmates were making phone calls and, in some cases, threatening people and extorting money on a regular basis. The inmates found ingenious ways to conceal the weapons. Police found some hidden inside the prison's 800-plus barracks and others stashed away under trees in the jail garden, which provided easy access.Police started carrying out routine searches of prisons in the state after an attack on repeat offender Srinivas alias Bettanagere Seena, who inmates of a rival gang tried to shoot with a pistol smuggled into Mysore Central Prison in 2011, an officer said. Seena escaped but was killed in a police encounter while out on bail in September 2012."One method is to fill tennis balls with marijuana and lob them into the prison from outside," the officer added. "Inmates who go out for court hearings or to hospital hide the contraband in their footwear before returning to the prison. There are four layers of security checks, but they often manage to get past them all."A senior prison official said it was next to impossible to prevent marijuana being smuggled into the jail.