For Jessica’s killer, Tihar offers an ‘open jail’ plan
NEW DELHI: He could be any white-collar worker, stepping out at 8 am and returning by 6 pm after putting in a hard day’s work. Except that the place he leaves in the morning and returns to in the evening isn’t a warm, comfortable home where he has family; it’s Tihar Central Jail.
Jessica Lal murder convict Siddharth Vashishta, better known by his alias Manu Sharma, has followed those timings since being transferred to the so-called open jail around three months ago in a reward for his “good conduct,” jail officials said. Five other inmates of Tihar, which holds about 15,000 prisoners, were similarly rewarded.
Many prison officials see the shift to open jail as the penultimate step before the eventual release of Sharma, 41, who has spent more than 12 years in the prison since being convicted in December 2006 of murdering Lal and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He has spent at least 15 years in prison since the day he was arrested by Delhi police for the murder. The Delhi high court found Sharma, son of Congress politician and former minister Venod Sharma, guilty of the April 1999 killing of Lal. He pulled out a gun and shot Lal, a model who was tending an unlicensed bar at a private party, after she refused to serve him a drink well past midnight.
According to his open-jail transfer order, Sharma has to work with the eponymous Siddharth Vashishta Foundation (SVF), a non-government organisation (NGO) which claims to work for rehabilitation of prisoners and their children.
Open-jail inmates are allowed to step out of prison gates and work every day.