The Delhi High Court on Monday called for a status report from the prison authority on the steps taken to ensure safety and security of witnesses in the alleged murder of gangster Ankit Gujjar inside Tihar jail.
Justice Mukta Gupta, who last week transferred the investigation in the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), directed that all witnesses be kept in a cell monitored by CCTV.
The High Court also sought the medical report of two witnesses who were allegedly not receiving proper treatment in spite of suffering “grievous injuries” in the same incident of assault.
During the hearing, CBI counsel said the investigating agency has registered an FIR into the case. The 29-year-old was found dead inside his cell in Tihar jail on August 4.
Witnesses’ petition
The court’s direction came while hearing a petition by five witnesses in the case seeking directions to ensure their safety and security as well as to restrain the authorities from “threatening/coercing/injuring them with a view to prevent them from seeking justice for themselves and the deceased inmate”.
“The petitioners are all inmates of Delhi Prisons and are eyewitnesses to the murder of one Ankit Gujjar [deceased], by respondent no.1 officials, inside Central Jail no.3 on 03.08.2021,” the petition reads.
“The sequence of events clearly demonstrates the existence of an imminent threat to the lives of the petitioners on account that they are eyewitnesses to a gruesome and brutal murder inside the jail premises by influential and powerful jail officials, at the behest of the highest rung authorities of the administration,” they said.
Advocate Mehmood Pracha, representing the petitioners, apprehended threat, injury and pressure from officials to coerce them into changing their stand.
The plea claimed that two of the petitioners were co-inmates of the deceased and are also victims of the same assault, while the other three saw the public beating of the deceased and the events leading his death.
Another two petitioners, who are currently out on interim bail, had informed the deceased family about the events that transpired in jail. They are scheduled to surrender on September 24, the plea said.
The fifth petitioner said, “he has also been a victim of the extortion racket of prison officials and though he has been now been shifted to Mandoli jail after the death of Gujjar, but threats were issued to him that he would also meet the same fate if he failed to pay the extortion monies”.
The high court will hear the case on September 27. The court had last week transferred the probe into the death of the gangster to the CBI“ noting he "lost his life to custodial violence”.
