Tihar admin forced 5 inmates to give Jain spl services: Probe panel report
Tihar authorities forced five prisoners to provide special services to fellow inmate Delhi minister Satyendar Jain, who was allowed to meet his wife multiple times and hold meetings with other co-accused in his cell during curfew hours, an inquiry committee appointed up by lieutenant governor (LG) VK Saxena has said, according to people aware of the matter and documents seen by HT.
Jain’s detention is the subject of intense political controversy, with a series of videos leaked last month showing him receive massages, being served food in his cell and having his room cleaned by some inmates.
A Delhi government official said the LG did not have the authority to set up the panel. “The committee and its report are illegal. LG is acting like Aurangzeb. He should realise India has a Constitution and he is bound by the same,” said a spokesperson for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.
Prison authorities told the inquiry panel, comprising the principal secretary (home), principal secretary (law) and secretary (vigilance), that inmates rendered their services voluntarily, according to people aware of the matter.
The report, seen by HT, also recommends that a department
inquiry be initiated against Delhi’s former director general of prisons, Sandeep Goel. “The committee found collusion on part of then DG Prison Sandeep Goel with Jain, and has recommended departmental proceedings against Goel for extending VIP treatment to Jain,” officials said, citing the findings.
The committee also found CCTV footage showing Sandeep Goel inside Jain’s cell between 6.39pm and 7.29pm on October 6. The committee in their report said this showed Goel was “quite close” to Jain.
Goel has been transferred to the police headquarters and another senior prison official, while jail superintendent Ajit Kumar, has been suspended, as well as the warden of the prison where Jain was detained, Vikas (who goes by a single name).
Goel and Kumar did not respond to requests for comment.
The report claimed that the five men who cleaned Jain’s room, brought him food and gave him a massage have all said they were coerced.
The inmates did not offer any service to Jain voluntarily or “out of love and affection” as cited by Kumar but because they feared that if they refused, they would be given “punishment ticket” or be tortured in jail, one of the officials cited above said, citing the report.
Jain also met with other people accused in the same case as he is, the report said. Meetings with Vaibhav Jain, Ankush Jain, Sanjay Gupta and Raman Bhuraria, who are accused in other cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate, would frequently happen, “even during restricted curfew hours”, the report said.
The Delhi minister, who also held the prisons portfolio till he was arrested, was taken into custody by ED in May under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) allegations. The central agency’s probe is based on a 2017 case of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in which it was alleged that the AAP leader and his wife Poonam Jain amassed assets worth ₹1.47 crore disproportionate to their known sources of income between February 2015 and May 2017.
Some of the other allegations that have since emerged were also part of the report, which said that Jain used the prison spend cards, which cap spends at ₹7,000 per month for each inmate, of other people to surpass the limit.
The report identifies the inmates involved as Rinku, Manish, Sonu Singh, Afsar Ali and Dilip Kumar. Of these, Rinku and Manish, who were only identified by their first names, are in prison over allegations that they sexually assaulted minors. Singh and Ali, who ostensibly cleaned Jain’s room, have been arrested for failing to pay maintenance money to their wives.
Rinku, who was seen in one of the videos giving a massage to Jain, told the inquiry committee that he “never got any training or course either in masseur work or for doing physiotherapy and that his main profession was to provide horses for marriage functions”, an official said.
When the videos first leaked, the AAP said the massages were part of doctor-prescribed physiotherapy.