Bangladesh has introduced a meditation course for its jail inmates with prison officials saying the pioneering work at India’s Tihar jail prompted them to launch the service to reform prisoners.

“In the past three years of my experience as the prison chief, I saw same people are coming back to jail committing the same crime as our routine counselling service appeared to be of little use. They actually need spiritual and mental purification,” Inspector General of Prisons Brigadier General Mohammad Ashraful Islam Khan told PTI.

Khan, an army doctor with expertise in preventive medicine serving as the prison chief on deputation, said that he expected the course would help to rectify prisoners and prevent recurrence of crimes through the meditative practices as “it worked in Tihar jail in India and prisons in Sri Lanka”.

Quantum Foundation, the leading and pioneering meditation school in Bangladesh, offered its free and voluntary service designing a special 10-day course outline for the inmates.

“We want to hate the sin, not the sinners – this was our principle in offering the service for the jail inmates,” said founder chief of Quantum Foundation.

The foundation’s director Suraiya Akhtar said 40 males and similar number of female inmates, who joined the maiden meditation course separately for the second consecutive day today, “massively responded”.

The prison chief said they selected the 80 prisoners, who were languishing in jails with longer term sentences, were selected for the maiden course as “we planned to develop the meditation instructors from them for running the practice sessions”.

The initiative came a month after Dhaka hosted an international jail conference, also joined by famous former Indian police official Kiran Bedi, who earned a special repute for introducing the meditation course in Tihar jail while she was in charge of the correction centre there.

Via Outlook India

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