Murder convict shares tips with inmates on how to delay trials
Vijay Palande also teaches prisoners on finer law points
Murder convict Vijay Palande, who is imprisoned in Thane Central jail since 2012, is giving a tough time to Maharashtra prisons authority and law enforcement agency by teaching inmates how to file Right to Information (RTI) requests to delay the beginning of their trials and find out loopholes in police investigations.
A senior officer of Maharashtra prisons said, “Palande is a crafty inmate. His hunger for knowledge related to his case is growing day-by-day. Now he is teaching trial-delaying tactics to his co-prisoners to defend themselves facing mandatory prison terms in most serious crimes like murder, rape, etc. A number of prisoners have started filing RTI requests to find out flaws in police investigations in their cases.”
After learning the methods from Palande, now the prisoners in Thane jail are sending RTI requests to know the case details of their inmates, and due to this, Palande has developed differences with the inmates, according to another officer of state prisons.
“For safety and security reasons, we have kept Palande in a separate cell of Thane jail,” said the officer.
The state prisons officer said that Palande had filed multiple RTI requests to know the minute details of ongoing cases registered against him at various police stations in Mumbai. “He is still practising the same method,” said the officer.
The former Director General of Police (DGP) of Maharashtra, Pravin Dixit said, “Generally the undertrial inmates send a number of RTI requests to keep the investigating officers engaged in lengthy paper work so that they may not be able to file the chargesheet within 90 days, failing which the prisoner will get bail and come out of judicial custody.”
Palande, a convict in a double murder case who is yet to face trial in other brutal murder cases that hit national headlines, is a master of disguise. He jumped parole and underwent plastic surgery to change his look and allegedly killed two others. Palande is believed to be one of the close associates of gangster Santosh Shetty with whom he worked in Thailand to gather intelligence for industrialists to extort security money.
The Free Press Journal has learnt that prisons’ authority, recently, wrote a letter to the Sessions Court to shift Palande from Thane to Mumbai jail.
“We have acute shortage of staff to escort inmates to court or hospitals. There are number of cases against Palande, whom we take to Mumbai court at least four times in a week for hearings with extra forces in escort vehicles. If Palande is shifted to Mumbai jail, harassment over his travel amidst busy road traffic between Thane and Mumbai will be lessened. Above all, there is no case registered against him in Thane commissionerate,” said the officer.
The delay in trial contributes to the chronic overcrowding problem of Thane jail, where around 3,300 inmates – undertrial and convicts (both male and female) – are imprisoned whereas its actual capacity is only 1,100.
A crime branch officer of Mumbai police said, “By filing number of RTI requests, Palande keeps investigators engaged in paper work rather than concentrating on probe into the cases he is booked into.”
The state prisons officer said that Palande had filed multiple RTI requests to know the minute details of ongoing cases against him