Streak of controversies shook Delhi jails
NEW DELHI: It was a year of controversies for prisons in the national capital. A host of incidents throughout 2021 threw light on instances of deep-rooted corruption, inadequate security measures, and the connivance of some officers in the city’s prison complexes. From incidents of alleged murder by jail officers to one of the largest scams pulled off by a prisoner and another involving over two dozen jail officers, the spate of controversies got out of hand, said a mid-level jail officer at Tihar, India’s biggest prison complex.
“There was a joke inside the Tihar prison a few months ago that we should pray to the gods to put a stop to the controversies,” said the officer. “For the first time in at least three decades while I have been here, the court ordered a prisoner to be shifted to another jail because Tihar officers had failed,” the officer added.
The underground office
On September 26, the Supreme Court ordered the transfer of two Tihar inmates — Sanjay and Ajay Chandra — to jails in Maharashtra after being informed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that prison officers were helping the two former Unitech promoters run a “secret underground office in south Delhi” from inside the jail. The disclosure also prompted the apex court to direct police commissioner Rakesh Asthana to “personally conduct” an inquiry.
Prison officers said this was the first time the city’s police chief was investigating corruption inside
Tihar, believed to be the country’s most secure jail.
“The corruption was on such a large scale that the commissioner had to step in. This was a first for us,” the officer quoted above said.
Asthana’s investigation led to the police registering an FIR against 32 Tihar prison officers.
The fraud
Sukesh Chandrashekhar, a prisoner at the Rohini jail, pulled off a ₹200 crore fraud, duping Aditi Singh, the wife of former Ranbaxy promoter Shivinder Mohan. Though by no means the first such instance of fraud by a jailed criminal, people aware of the matter said the scale of fraud and the way prison officers were involved in the scam set this incident apart.
The Delhi Police arrested Chandrashekhar (32) in 2017 for allegedly duping an All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leader of ₹2 crore on the pretext of helping the politician retain the party’s two leaves symbol by bribing officers of the Election Commission.
Investigations later revealed that two prison superintendents helped Chandrashekhar pull off the scam.
At least 19 people, including two former superintendents, four deputy superintendents, the branch manager of a private bank, and Chandrashekhar’s partner actor Leena Maria Paul have been arrested in the case so far. The police have alleged that jail superintendents were paid around ₹45-50 lakh a month to allow Chandrashekhar a free hand inside prison. Junior jail employees, like warders and head warders, were paid ₹5-10 lakh a month.
While inside the prison, officers procured two smartphones for Chandrashekhar. He then posed as a senior government officer and called Aditi Singh. During the several conversations, he also claimed he would ensure bail for her husband Shivinder Mohan (also an inmate in Tihar jail, imprisoned for his role in a fraud case).
The murders
Two murders of imprisoned criminals highlighted cover-ups that involved senior jail officers.
Ankit Gujjar, 29, one of western Uttar Pradesh’s most wanted men, was allegedly beaten to death by prison officers inside Tihar’s jail 3 on August 3. The prison department said Gujjar and two others were injured in a scuffle that broke out after jail officers confiscated a cellphone, data cable, and a knife from the former’s cell. The case papers that Gujjar’s lawyers submitted in court showed that CCTV cameras were switched off at the spot he was murdered. The prime accused in this case is a deputy superintendent. In their statement, prison officers said the jail doctor visited an injured Gujjar after the scuffle, but the doctor denied this in court.
DELHI PRISONS
Three months before Gujjar’s murder, a 33-year-old prisoner, Shrikant Rama Swami was stabbed to death inside Tihar’s jail 2, a day before he was to be released. The alleged murderers in this case were five other prisoners who, a jail officer claimed, murdered Swami because he allegedly bullied them. But the victim’s family denied this, alleging that Swami was murdered because he failed to pay extortion money to a deputy superintendent. In this case too, the CCTV cameras where Swami was murdered were not working.
The CBI is probing both cases.
The job scam
The latest controversy from inside the Tihar prison complex involved no criminals, and just jail officers.
In the last week of November, when officials from the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB) set out to verify the identities of junior prison officials, they found a mismatch in the records of 47 warders, matrons and assistant superintendents who had been working there since 2019.
Their fingerprints, submitted in 2019 during the written and physical tests for jobs inside the prison, did not match with the ones that DSSSB officials collected last month, leading investigators to suspect an incidence of mass impersonation. For almost two years, the 47 men — now transferred to non-sensitive units within the prison — had been on duty guarding inmates involved in many important cases.
The salaries of the 47 have been put on hold and jail officials will later this month start proceedings against them.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said, “During the Corona