Three days after the prisoners started rioting inside the Modern Jail on the outskirts of Kapurthala, after a prisoner allegedly died for want of treatment, the jail officials during the preliminary assessment have put the losses at a whopping Rs 20 crore.
            Jail Superintendent Surinder Singh Saini said that the estimates have not yet been finalised even as the PWD officials and other agencies are assessing the damages caused to the jail property by the inmates. Sources said that the entire 50-bed hospital, included its ICU ward and latest equipment, was reduced to ashes while water supply pipes, LCD TVs, doors, windows, concrete structure of various barracks, CCTV network, meeting room have been destroyed.
It may be noted that jail inmates had set everything on fire on Sunday after the death of an inmate in jail. They also tried to ransack the entire jail, which was inaugurated just 20 days back. The police sources said that the arson would cost heavy to the government exchequer as it is an unavoidable expenditure and cannot be delayed for long. Meanwhile, it was learnt that some jail inmates who were drug addicts have been sent to the Civil Hospital, Kapurthala, as they were showing withdrawal symptoms following the non-supply of the drugs in the jail.
Jail superintendent Saini admitted that withdrawal symptoms were reported in some of the undertrails. “We have been treating them in jail after doing some temporary arrangements and some of them were being sent outside the jail to other hospitals for treatment,” he added.