Hazaribagh: This New Year, Loknayak Jai Prakash Narayan Central Jail here became the first prison in Jharkhand to provide intercoms for prisoners to interact with their visiting kin.

Eleven intercom sets were installed on Monday, the first day of 2018, at a cost of Rs 43,000, jail superintendent Hamid Akhtar said, adding that this facility, which was a longstanding demand of inmates, would make conversations between prisoners and their visitors more clear and less chaotic.

Earlier, prisoners assembled at five windows and their relatives on the other side separated by a corridor. Both sides had to shout to be heard, with multiple exchanges getting lost in the din.

"Intercoms enable conversations between prisoner and visitor to be clearly heard. We are keeping more than one intercom per window as per need," Akhtar said, adding large prisons such as Tihar jail in Delhi had intercoms.

Jail records say 250 to 300 people come meet their incarcerated relatives every day - 1,800 inmates are lodged in this jail - in the stipulated time from 8.30am to 12.30pm on all seven days. Each visitor/ group is allowed to talk for a maximum of five minutes with a prisoner.

The central jail superintendent added they were building cabins at all five windows to further streamline the process of interaction. "Prisoners can enter the cabin one by one, talk and leave," he said.

A woman relative of a prisoner who did not want to be named welcomed the intercoms. Speaking to the paper outside the jail, she said, "We could hear each other clearly on the intercom. Sometimes one has to discuss personal issues too."