Women lifers bid emotional adieu to officers

Among the 52 lifers who were released in connection with the state government’s MGR birth centenary celebrations, eight were women. While men maintained a distance from officials, women prisoners and prison authorities, also women, were conversing like siblings even an hour later after they were released on Tuesday.

Every time the freed prisoners said poitu varen (‘I would come back’), prison officials corrected them saying it was not a place for them to return. They have been provided with a sewing machine and an idli maker to aid them for employment when they step out. 

Dhanalakshmi (55), a mother of five who spent 14 years in prison for murdering her husband, is a native of Thoothukudi. “I’m planning to settle down with one of my daughters in Kalpakkam and start an eatery,” she said. 

She said the inmates were treated fairly by the wardens only after Rukmani Priyadarshini took over as prison superintendent. 

“She would visit us twice a day and made us feel better. She streamlined a lot of things which were not given proper attention till then.” This was the second batch of life convicts whose sentences have been commuted after 67 men were released last week.