Jaipur:
An astounding 355 mobile phones and 112 SIM cards have been recovered in surprise raids on the Jaipur jail in the past one year. But despite repeated raids, the big mystery is how these mobiles find an entry inside the prison.
While this is clearly a cause of worry for jail authorities, the bigger crisis is that raids in the past few days have shown that some prisoners are using these mobiles to run an extortion racket.
Deepak Gujjar has been in jail for more than a year. A notorious history-sheeter of his area, he faces 13 cases in four police stations of Jaipur. But after being jailed, Deepak's criminal activities have hardly declined. Instead, he allegedly uses a mobile phone to contact families of new prisoners and runs an extortion racket from inside the jail.
"With the collusion of two constables, Deepak and another prisoner Sunil took 4-5 new inmates to Ward Numer Five in the jail and thrashed them badly. Later they called their relatives and started pressurising them to pay 50 thousand rupees for the safety of those new prisoners," said investigating officer Suryaveer Singh.
Deepak allegedly threatened new inmates that if he wasn't given money he would not let them live peacefully in the jail. But besides Deepak, jail officials suspect that many prisoners are running criminal networks using mobile phones. Over the past year, 355 mobiles have been recovered from the Jaipur jail which seems impossible without the connivance of jail authorities.
"Some notorious prisoners, who enjoy being in jail, form their own groups there. Since they live for years, they begin to dominate others. Our problem is acute shortage of staff which makes it very tough to keep a close eye on every prisoner," said Ram Kishore Saini, Jail Minister, Rajasthan.
After a police enquiry, two members of the jail staff have now been arrested. Jails are meant to reform criminals but given the collusion of officials, this reform centre is clearly turning into a den of criminal activity.