Kapurthala, April 7
Dressed in an immaculately clean and well-ironed white salwar-kameez with her head covered with a dupatta, a kirpan slung from her shoulder signifying her amritdhari (baptised) status and well-polished white shoes, Bibi Jagir Kaur, the 57-year-old state minister-turned-convict, is a queen of all she surveys.

If you forget for a moment that she is lodged in the Model Jail located on the outskirts of this sleepy princely town of yore, she may easily pass off as a minister seated in her office or drawing room in complete command as she plays host to a daily stream of supporters and well wishers who bring enough food, she claims, to feed most inmates in the jail.

“I don’t feel I am in jail. I feel I am in a hostel,” she says lauding the system prevailing in the jail that was set up as a reforms house by the state government.

As destiny would have it, she is lodged in the very jail that she once inaugurated along with Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.

“On inspection during the inauguration, I got carried away seeing the spic-and-span rooms at the jail. I told Badal sahib that the jail looks so good that I feel like being here as an inmate. I was admonished by him in his characteristic style: “Biba ji, you don’t need to make such a wish,” she recalled.

Even after being lodged in jail for a week, Bibi continues to play host to a horde of supporters, relatives and well wishers who bow in front of her and touch her feet. “I am in high spirits. You do not need to worry about me,” comes an assurance from Jagir Kaur to all who stand apologetically in front of her.

She said that she had not been extended any special treatment. She was sharing a room with four inmates in the hospital of the jail. She had not been provided any special cell on the premises.

She was allowed to only watch Doordarshan on TV installed in the other barracks and no air conditioner had been given to her.

On the allegation of jail authorities allowing a huge number of visitors, she said it was her way of maintaining peace in the state. She was meeting her supporters in jail to pacify them. Otherwise, they would resort to protests. “It was God’s verdict. I have faith in the judiciary and law of the land. I will knock the doors of the highest court to get justice,” she tells this correspondent who met her incognito here today.

In her words, the other inmates too are in high spirits. “They tell me they have never seen such a ‘mela’ at this place. As I distribute all the eatables I receive as gifts, they say they have never had such a feast. Now, I have spent Rs 15,000 from my pocket to buy shelves to set up a library. They see me as a reformist sent by none other than Guru Nanak.

What she is conspicuously unwilling to speak is about the mother in her. “I grieve about her and it is all inside me. Is there a parent who would not mourn his/her child’s death?” she said.

But her ire is directed at her political detractors (and even the media) who she alleges are responsible for her conviction. “My rivals have been spreading stories about me to lower my honour in society,” she says. “I am a woman. I lost my husband as a young woman. I had to shoulder the responsibility of two little daughters and then, I had a meteoric rise in politics. “They (her detractors) could not do anything but make stories about my daughter’s affair and pregnancy. Her pictures were morphed and witnesses were created. But I will get justice one day and so will my daughter,” she says, adding, “I do not know any Kamaljit (her daughter’s fiance). I do not want to talk about insects,” she says.