meerut the city is well known as a hub of sports goods manufacturing what few know however is that the inmates of meerut central jail offer a pool of talent that powers the sports goods industry sports goods worth lakhs of rupees are churned out each month by jail inmates many of those who contribute to this industry are convicted criminals serving a life sentence in heinous crimes the inmates stitch tracksuits cricket lowers shorts footballs and football tshirts on orders from manufacturers the jails activity is coordinated by a society jail superintendent shm rizvi said the inmate development and rehabilitation cooperative society was founded on january 22 2011 there are 56 members all jail inmates in the society and i am its president this society started two factories the stitching factory and the sports factory from the time of its inception till september 30 2014 the society has clocked a turnover of rs 4173775 a total of rs 3046606 has been credited to the bank accounts of inmates the profit earned by the society in this time stands at rs 1127169 and this profit is ploughed back into purchase of more machines more than 70 of the 3200 inmates are at present engaged in the manufacture of the goods sanjiv kumar serving a life term in a case of dowry death is one of them he stitches pants and shirts feroz ansari who has been in jail for two years used to run a boutique in shastri nagar before being convicted in a murder case mohammad shamshad another convict serving a life term is also the supervisor of the stitching factory each karigar earns as per the number of garments or footballs he stitches anil singh for instance earns rs 15 for each trackpant he stitches shamshad said adding that subhash pal a convict stitches five footballs a day and earns rs 20 per ball in the entire day 50 footballs are stitched every worker gets anything between rs 3000 to rs 6000 a month he says the factory starts at 7 am and runs until 5 pm earning money and spending time at work is a good motivation for inmates here many more now show greater inclination to learning a vocation rizvi said