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Punjab jails on alert after mobiles, cigarettes consignment seized from Amritsar Central Jail
The consignment seized inside Amritsar Central Jail included five keypad mobiles, two mobile chargers, 153 bundles of cigarettes, three packets of cigarettes, 15 packets of tobacco, 10 packets of paan masala, 14 packets of rice papers and three heater springs
An alert has been issued in Punjab jails apprehending the smuggling of mobiles and other banned items owing to the foggy season.
On Thursday, a large consignment of banned items was recovered from the Amritsar Central Jail. The consignment, according to the officials of the high-security jail, was thrown into the prison from the outside.
The consignment included five keypad mobiles, two mobile chargers, 153 bundles of cigarettes, three packets of cigarettes, 15 packets of tobacco, 10 packets of paan masala, 14 packets of rice papers and three heater springs.
After the recovery, jails minister Harjot Singh Bains said, “Due to dense fog, an alert has been raised in all the jails in Punjab as we are anticipating an increase in such incidents wherein prohibited articles are thrown inside the jail. In Amritsar jail, 14 such incidents have been foiled this month.”
This is not the first case when a huge consignment of banned items has been seized from the jail. This month during checking around 70 mobile phones were seized from the central jail.
According to police officials, one of the prime reasons prisoners sneak cell phones inside the jails was their proximity to densely populated areas, besides the presence of black sheep in the security.
“In the last two weeks, since the foggy season has begun, we have noticed an increase in the number of incidents wherein banned articles were thrown from outside. We have increased our vigil along the boundary walls, but still, inmates manage to get banned items sometimes. We have recovered many mobiles from the cells of inmates in the recent past,” said a jail official, who didn’t wish to be named.
The prisons of Punjab have already been under the scanner for their porous security and the ease with which many dreaded criminals and gangsters have managed to stay in touch with their gang members from inside their cells. This month, one of the accused in the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on the Sarhali police station of Tarn Tarn district was found to be lodged in Goindwal Central jail.
The accused Ajmeet Singh had hatched the plan while inside the jail. He was arrested for killing a shopkeeper around two months ago and had been in contact with Canada-based gangster Lakhbir Singh alias Landa from the jail.
Earlier, gangster Deepak Tinu, one of the accused in Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala’s murder, had fled from the custody of the Mansa police. Tinu was on a production warrant, and reports had surfaced that he had hatched a conspiracy to flee while inside the jail. A mobile phone was also recovered from Tinu and one more accused in Sidhu Moosewala’s murder case when they were in the Goindwal jail in September.
Similarly, in October, the special task force (STF) busted a nexus of gangsters, who were operating from inside the Goindwal jail in collusion with a senior jail official.
