Court visits for hearings offer undertrial prisoners the best opportunities to smuggle prohibited items into Tihar jail. Around 400 recoveries of such items have been made by the accompanying policemen during frisking after court visits this year. And these are just the recoveries. With 1,300-1,500 undertrials being taken to courts everyday, the actual number of such smugglings could be much higher, say police officers tasked with transfer of these prisoners.
There have been several instances of Tihar jail staff being accused of aiding inmates to procure banned items, as well as prisoners’ relatives throwing tennis balls containing SIM cards and blades across the high walls of the prison, but few opportunities are better than court visits.
The family and friends of prisoners lie in wait in court premises on the date of the hearing of their ward. “When an undertrial is led from the prison vans to the courtrooms, these people mob him with the intention to transfer items like surgical blades, tobacco products, SIM cards, cash and chits containing secret information,” says Deputy Commissioner of Police (Third Battalion) Shivendra Kant Tewari.
The items are passed through on the pretext of handshakes and hugs. Sometimes, even lawyers pass on items during legal consultations, the officer says. The articles are mostly concealed by prisoners in body cavities and often go undetected even when they pass through the metal detector door-frame.
“In May, we caught a man supplying 25 packets of drugs to a prisoner being produced in Rohini Courts,” said Mr. Tewari.
While policemen undergo training for searching and frisking prisoners, most of them are relatively inexperienced on the job for the first few days. The police say most successful smuggling of goods into Tihar jail takes place when such policemen are put on the job.
Court visits also provide ample chances to plan an escape as not more than two policemen generally escort a prisoner to the courtroom. Four prisoners, including three while being taken for court appearance, have made good their escape from the custody of Third Battalion this year.
One of them, Surat Singh, managed to escape from Tis Hazari court premises in late July after one of his accomplices sprayed chilli powder into the eyes of the escorting policemen. He was nabbed from the court premises by the same team.
On three other occasions, prisoners escaped by either pushing away the escorting policemen or entering into a scuffle with them. Barring one incident, the Third Battalion soon recaptured the escaped prisoners.
In one of the escape incidents, policemen are accused of extending favours to a prisoner who was escorted court visit in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, in January. The policemen allegedly took him for lunch to an eatery outside the railway station instead of a secured one inside. Five policemen are currently under suspension in that case.
Only a few days ago, six policemen of the Third Battalion were dismissed from service after they were captured taking a prisoner shoe shopping in Agra.
