A recent incident at Tihar jail in Delhi involved the recovery of 23 surgical blades, drugs, smartphones, and SIM cards from an inmate. The discovery was made on Thursday morning when staff members at the central jail number 3 noticed some suspicious behavior among the prisoners and conducted a search.
“On 9th March at about 6:40am, staff of Central Jail No 3, Tihar, on noticing suspicious movement of some inmates, intercepted them and after a thorough body search recovered a packet containing 23 surgical blades, drugs, two touch screen phones, a SIM card and other related contrabands from possession of one,” a prison official told.
The officials said further investigation revealed the packet was thrown inside the jail over the walls of an adjoining jail. “The inmate who threw the packet inside has been identified,” the official added.
Following the incident, the matter was reported to the police for further investigation.
It is a positive development that the Delhi chief minister has taken action to address the issue of mobile phone usage in jails. The formation of the expert committee, headed by the director general (prisons), is a step in the right direction towards finding a solution to this problem. Installing signal jammers could help prevent the use of mobile phones by inmates, which could reduce the incidence of illegal activities being carried out from within the jail premises. It remains to be seen what recommendations the committee will make and what measures will be implemented to curb the use of mobile phones in Delhi jails.
Other than Tihar, Delhi has two more prison complexes, Rohini and Mandoli which house around 18,000 inmates currently.
The government’s order came after an alarming report that at least 348 cell phones were recovered from prisoners across the three complexes in just the previous two months. The numbers are unusually high because a prison official told Hindustan Times earlier that usually about 100-200 phones are recovered by the police in a year during raids in these complexes.
