Chandigarh: On Thursday, 27 June, rioting prisoners clashed with police at the Ludhiana Central Jail leaving one inmate dead and five officials injured. A vehicle belonging to a jail official was also torched after the inmates set fire to LPG cylinders.
Police had opened fire after the prisoners threw bricks at the jail guards; several inmates live-streamed the entire episode from inside the jail using mobile phones.
Just days earlier, on 22 June, two inmates had killed Mahinder Pal Bittu, a Dera Sacha Sauda follower, inside the high-security jail at Nabha near Patiala. Bittu, the prime accused in the 2015 Bargari sacrilege incident, had been on the radar of hardline Sikh groups after his alleged involvement in the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib.
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The two violent incidents in less than a week have once again exposed the notoriety of Punjab’s prisons. They are also a microcosm of what ails these jails where the large presence of dreaded gangsters coupled with an acute shortage of security staff, rampant corruption among jail employees, lack of inmate employment, easy prisoner access to mobile phones and drug abuse have transformed these “reformation homes” into tinder boxes waiting to explode.
ThePrint explains Punjab’s troubles in maintaining order in its 26 jails that house around 23,000 inmates.
Out-of-control gangsters
Over 300 gangsters lodged in jails across Punjab are ‘feared’ – not only by other inmates but the jail staff as well. They are known to form groups, recruit inmates and run organised crime rackets from inside the prisons.
That has sparked turf wars, both within the prisons and outside them.
In January 2015, gangster Sukhbir Singh Kahlwan was killed in broad daylight near Phagwara when he was being brought back to the Nabha jail following a court hearing. The killers danced around the police vehicle ferrying Kahlwan after shooting him dead in the presence of jail’s security men who remained mute spectators.
Months later, in April 2015, members of rival gangs clashed in Bathinda jail with one inmate opening fire at another with a country-made weapon. In May 2015, 10 prisoners were injured following violent clashes between inmates in the Nabha jail.
In February 2016, three inmates were injured after another clash at the Bathinda jail. In June the same year an inmate was killed following a scuffle at the Amritsar jail.
Rohit Chaudhry, ADGP (prisons), Punjab, said till some years ago it was widely held that gangsters dominated and virtually ran the jails they were in. “They cocked a snook at police and jail staff. Gangsters fought with other inmates and one another inside jails,” said Chaudhry.
Things came to a head when these gangsters planned and carried out the sensational Nabha jail break in November 2016. Five gangsters along with a former militant escaped the high security prison in the cover of incessant firing by their accomplices outside the jail who fled with them in their vehicles.
Security zones created
Following the Nabha jailbreak, ADGP Chaudhry says, jail authorities began creating security zones, which housed only gangsters and ‘hardcore criminals’.
“The Nabha jailbreak was the turning point,” Chaudhry said. “It was decided to isolate the gangsters and other dreaded criminals so that they do not mix with other inmates. We began creating special security zones which were separate barracks, away from the other barracks — almost like a fortified jail within a jail.”
He added that there are now 21 security zones spread across various jails, with some prisons having more than one security zone.
“The creation of security zones eventually led to jail staff dominating jails,” Chaudhry said. “There has been considerable decrease in untoward incidents inside jails and organised crimes rackets run by gangster from jails.”
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The security zones, however, have not been able to fully contain trouble makers.
In March 2017, within days of one another violent, clashes broke out in Kapurthala and Gurdaspur jails. Police had to resort to firing in the day-long Gurdaspur incident in which two jail warders and several inmates were injured.
In July 2017, inmates clashed with the jail’s security staff in Hoshiarpur jail in a bid to free a prisoner. This was followed by the Ludhiana incident Thursday.
“There is a power game on between the jail security staff and the criminals lodged in the security zones. The Ludhiana and the Gurdaspur jail riots are signs of that power struggle,” Chaudhry said. “In fact, the inmates who instigated the riot in Gurdaspur were shifted to Ludhiana and here they did the same thing on Thursday.”
Mobile phone menace
The jails department has failed to make jail barracks mobile free. According to the police, the two killers of the Dera Sacha Sauda devotee were in touch with their accomplices outside the jails through mobile phones. Thursday’s clashes in the Ludhiana jail were live-streamed on Facebook by inmates on their mobile phones.
In May last year, an inmate of the Faridkot jail went live on Facebook using his mobile and issued a threat to Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh for having falsely taken an oath of the Guru Granth Sahib.
Days after Jails Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa took charge in March 2018, he received a congratulatory call from an inmate of the Gurdaspur jail, giving him a “first-hand”experience of the rampant use of mobiles in the state’s jails. After nine phones were recovered from the Gurdaspur jail, Randhawa ordered the suspension of the jail superintendent and his deputy.
Mobile phones are nabbed almost daily from barracks or during frisking of the inmates in the jails. In 2017, over 1,500 mobile phones were recovered from jails. And the number has only increased over the years.
One of the reasons for this and the other issues is that jails in Punjab suffer from an acute shortage of staff. At present, there are close to 1,400 persons employed by the jails department to manage prisons while the requirement is of 2,000 people.
Randhawa also admits that inmates carrying mobile phones is not possible without the connivance of the jail staff. In April 2019, four jail officials were dismissed from service for aiding gangsters, lodged in Patiala jail, in running an extortion racket.
Following a major crackdown on jail staff by Randhawa early this year, action was taken against several officials for allowing inmates to use mobile phones, drugs and keep cash.
On Tuesday drugs were recovered from the central jail in Hoshiarpur. Last year, a Punjab police officer was arrested for smuggling drugs into the Kapurthala jail.
The demand for CRPF
In the wake of the Dera Sacha Sauda follower’s murder on 22 June, the Punjab jails department had sought backup from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to man the special security zones. “Local jail staff are prone to being influenced by inmates depleting their effectiveness,” ADGP Chaudhry said. “We had asked for six units of CRPF, each unit consisting of about 85 personnel. But we have got three units only — the first of which is likely to reach the state in the next few days.”
The CRPF units will initially be posted in the jails at Bathinda, Ludhiana and Amritsar, all of which have three security zones each.
Idle minds
Unlike in the rest of the country, inmates in Punjab jails are unable to work for the number of assigned hours each day. Randhawa blames it on 10 years of Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP rule in the state.
“Factories inside jails are in a state of chaos today because nobody ever bothered to streamline their functioning and ensure that inmates have something substantial to do throughout the day. The prime reason why inmates indulge in violence is because they just sit idle the whole day,” argued Randhawa.
Earlier this month, the jail department had collaborated with the Indian Oil Corporation to open retail outlets outside Amritsar prison where inmates will be employed. “We are trying to employ them at factories owned by the cooperative sector institutions such as Sugarfed,” Randhawa said.
Upneet Lalli, Deputy Director, Institute of Correctional Administration in Chandigarh, said,
“There is no single solution to problems in Punjab jails. Whenever an inmate dies, it is a crisis situation and has to be handled more carefully. There is a need for dynamic security inside jails as also better communication between prisoners and jail staff”.
If The Punjab Prisons Were effective enough To House Hardcore Militants Like Malkiat Singh Ajnala During The 80s And early/middle 90s, keeping These Village people in Line should Be a Cakewalk for the authoritys but It Isnt Because Govts Led By The bjp/ Badals and There twin Counterpart Capt Singh are weak Willed and Tainted in There Own Corrupt Legacys.In Punjab There Have Been Director Gens Of Police who Cant Even Remove Anti Social Elements From Within There Ranks because They Enjoy Patronage of Crony Politicians Belonging To Bjp/Kali Dal And Congress Partys.
the people in the punjabs jails are hardly dreaded gangsters but common village riff raff who form groups because alone they are cowards, its called safety in numbers also.one needs to remove the corrupt/uneducated punjab police from the prison system and bring in the crp or cisf an expensive option for a bankrupt state like punjab.if you look a h.m.prisons in western nations like england they were tough until the labour govt of antony blair came to power in 1997 after which they gradually turned into holiday camps with private companys like serco causing further decay. backward states and there govts around india should learn from this method as they seem hell bent on copying the west in everything and failing miserably.