Allowing women inmates to relieve themselves in the privacy of enclosed toilets is a luxury the Lalbazar authorities can ill afford.

The reason: women accused in the central lock-up have committed suicide by hanging themselves from the ceiling.

The Assembly standing committee on homes and jails, during a recent inspection at the Lalbazar police headquarters, stumbled upon the fact that toilets for women inmates have neither doors nor roofs. It has been mentioned in the report tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday.

Committee chairman Gyan Singh Sohan Pal has urged the government to set up a panel comprising secretaries to the departments of home (police), finance and planning and development to look into the ?pitiable condition? of police stations and lock-ups in Calcutta and the districts.

The secretaries? panel, the standing committee feels, should submit its report within six months and the government should implement its recommendations within five years.

During its visit to Lalbazar, the committee found that infrastructure was better than in the other lock-ups.

It also appreciated the fact that the lock-up has a resident doctor and female attendants who work throughout day and night.

But the toilets for women accused were without doors and roofs. When the committee asked for the reason, the police commissioner said a few female inmates had hanged themselves from the ceiling after locking the doors.

The report is also critical of the way several lock-ups in the districts are maintained.

The lock-ups at West Midnapore?s Kotwali police station, for instance, have no ventilators and the ones at Kharagpur police station are not habitable.

The locks-ups at Golabari and Howrah GRP, Asansol, Durgapur and Uluberia police stations do not have any sanitation system, fans or ventilators. ?The lock-ups of police stations are, by and large, in a state of neglect and suffer from a lack of basic needs and amenities for prisoners,? the report has observed.

As for the police stations, the committee has been informed that 10 thanas in the Calcutta Police area and 70 under the state police jurisdiction are functioning from rented premises.

The panel has recommended that each prisoner gets at least 36 sq ft space and that the practice of keeping women inmates in the rooms of duty officers be discontinued.