Jails stink of graft
Four years after a prisoner’s allegations against Patiala Central Jail officials, three staffers have been booked on the charges of causing hurt to the prisoner for torture, extortion, involvement in a criminal conspiracy and corruption. In January, seven Rohini Jail officials were arrested for taking crores of rupees for helping a prisoner run his racket that notably included extorting Rs 200 crore from former Fortis Healthcare promoter Shivinder Singh’s wife Aditi Singh. In Punjab and Haryana, imprisonment does not seem to bar gangsters from plotting murders. These cases reflect how most jails are corruption-ridden. But, sadly, few jailors are brought to book, encouraging them to go on with their nefarious designs.
Prison staffers have broadly established an extra-judicial set of norms for the rich or influential inmates, both convicts and undertrials. While the poor and petty prisoners are condemned to a life of misery in the cells, rotting away in inhuman conditions, others — lodged, perhaps, for graver crimes — bribe their way to a luxurious stay. Running the premises as personal fiefdoms with a captive population, the corrupt officials don’t give a fig for the jail manual prescribing equal status and human rights to all. While stories of preferential treatment to the select few abound, penal action against the authorities enabling this VIP culture is sorely missing. Such is the greed for the ill-begotten moolah that officials are even known to stoop to extortion and assault for the same.
Among those known to get VIP treatment are jailed politicians (Sasikala, Lalu Yadav, Amar Singh), business tycoons (Subrata Roy, Unitech ex-promoters Sanjay and Ajay Chandra) and self-styled godmen (Gurmeet Ram Rahim, Asaram Bapu). Rules are bent or ignored to facilitate for them perks like TVs, outside food, separate toilets, ACs, mobile phones, frequent hospitalisation, parole and furlough and longer time with visitors. Rapping Tihar jailors over reports that the incarcerated Chandra brothers were running a ‘secret underground office in south Delhi’, the Supreme Court wondered whether a parallel system prevailed in jails. Well, evidence does point to special rights being extended to certain criminals. Equally clear is lack of determination to break the unholy nexus.
