Senior officers of the state prison department have asked its staff to ensure that hardened criminals lodged in cases of terrorism, bomb blasts, Naxalism or underworld are not allowed to use the coin-box telephone facility inside jails, but those on death row are exempt from this.

In a letter issued on July 27, outgoing addl. DGP (prisons) B K Upadhyay, now posted as Nagpur CP, had asked the staff to maintain a register. The letter says calls should be monitored, and if there are security issues in taking the convict from his cell to the phone, these should be installed near the high security cells itself.