The Kerala cabinet has granted approval for the release of prisoners who have completed their life sentences in state prisons.
The Home Ministry had recommended 67 prisoners -- who had served 14 years of jail terms for various offences -- be released.
However, those who were involved in crimes against children and women, including rape and murder, besides serious offences against children will not be released.
Besides, the prisoners with psychological issues, whose relatives/family are unwilling to take them in, and habitual offenders, who have been deemed a danger to society will also be kept in the prisons.
Kerala prisons had let go a large number of inmates, on parole, when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging throughout the country last year.
It was an effort to decongest the prisons based on a Supreme Court directive that had instructed states and union territories to avoid overcrowding in prisons.
