Cameras turned off in Tihar before Ankit Gujjar’s murder

DELHI POLICE SAID ON THURSDAY THAT THEY SOUGHT CCTV FOOTAGE FOR THE PROBE, BUT THAT JAIL OFFICERS SAID THERE WAS NONE

NEW DELHI: Between 9.30am on August 3 and 4.50pm on August 4, the time when top Uttar Pradesh gangster Ankit Gujjar got into a scuffle with jail officers and was found unconscious in another part of the prison, CCTV cameras inside ward 1 and 5A of Tihar jail 3 were switched off for “maintenance work”, according to a prison report seen by HT.

With allegations being aired that Gujjar, 29, was murdered because he was a whistle-blower and was providing information on an alleged extortion racket run by prison officials, the CCTV footage from the two wards could have been crucial evidence in establishing the sequence of events.

Meanwhile, a prisoner in his statement to the police, which HT has seen, alleged that jail officers switched off CCTV cameras on the afternoon of August 3, after which around “50 guards armed with lathis” attacked Gujjar and two other prisoners.

Delhi Police have registered a case of murder but are yet to arrest the main accused, deputy superintendent Narendra

Meena. Suspended after the incident, Meena is currently in police protection.

In the past month, this is the third case in which the officials of the country’s biggest prison have come under probe for allegations of corruption, custodial torture, and helping prisoners access banned items. Delhi Police commissioner Rakesh Asthana is already conducting an inquiry on role of prison officers who allegedly helped two jailed builders run an underground office in south Delhi from inside the jail. In another case, police arrested two jail officers for helping conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar dupe the wife of a top businessman (who is currently in jail) by spoofing phone numbers and posing as a law ministry officer.

In the Gujjar murder case, in a status report filed before the high court on Thursday, Delhi Police said that they sought CCTV footage as part of the murder probe, but that jail officers said there was none. The prison department wrote to the police that the cameras were switched off on the morning of August 3 until the afternoon of August 4, because there were technical problems faced during installing of cameras in other parts of jail 3. As part of increasing surveillance in jails, the prison department is installing CCTV cameras all across the prison compound.

“As a result of such technical problems, the cameras between ward 1 and 5A were switched off,” reads the prison department’s report to the police.

Ward 1 is the place where Gujjar was shifted to and later found dead after the scuffle with jail officers — at around 6am on August 4 — and ward 5A is where the scuffle happened the previous day. Prison officers said that they used “minimum force” to contain Gujjar and his two cell mates after they were caught with a cell phone, data cable, and a knife.

The post-mortem report by a medical board, however, showed that Gujjar had at least 12 injuries on his head, neck and other parts of the body. The Delhi high court on Thursday noted that the injuries and absence of CCTV footage indicated that Gujjar’s death was a case of “custodial violence and torture”.

Until his arrest in August 2020, Gujjar was one of western Uttar Pradesh’s most wanted persons. Accused in at least eight murder cases, Gujjar carried a reward of ₹1.25 lakh on his head at the time of his arrest — ₹1 lakh announced by Uttar Pradesh police and ₹25,000 by Delhi police. Tihar jail officers declined to comment, saying that the investigation in the case is on and it is being heard in courts.