Delhi Police chase after parole jumpers

Over the last two weeks, police have caught at least 40 such “parole jumpers” who are yet to surrender.

Deepak Pandey(26) was convicted in a 2013 murder case and sentenced to life imprisonment years behind bars.

Delhi’s three jails in Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini moved to release prisoners to enforce distancing and other Covid protocol inside prison, in line with the recommendations of a a high-powered committee appointed by the Delhi high court. (HT File)

In April 2020, he was released from Delhi’s Tihar jail as part of efforts to decongest the city’s cramped barracks. Pandey was asked to surrender in February-March 2021, when cases in the Capital were low. He never showed up.

Police teams searched his registered address in outer Delhi’s Nangloi, then a relative’s place in Punjab’s Ludhiana. Both turned out to be false leads. Then, working on a tip, police travelled to a remote mountain village in Himachal Pradesh’s Solan district on September 8 , and found Pandey disguised as a factory worker.

He isn’t the only one. Over the last two weeks, police have caught at least 40 such “parole jumpers” who are yet to surrender. Police have now formed separate teams to nab these people, coordinating with informers, raiding small towns, holding out inducements, and luring prisoners with money.

“We have formed dedicated teams to trace such parole jumpers. We are also coordinating with the police forces of other states,” said a mid-level police officer from a police station in Dwarka.

Shortly after the nationwide lockdown was clamped on March 25, Delhi’s three jails in Tihar, Mandoli and Rohini moved to release prisoners to enforce distancing and other Covid protocol inside prison, in line with the recommendations of a a high-powered committee appointed by the Delhi high court. At the time, the three prisons had at least 18000 prisoners.

The prisoners were asked to surrender in February and March 2021. But according to jail records seen by HT, of the 5,556 released undertrial prisoners, 2,458 are yet to surrender. Of the 1,184 convicts, 94 are absconding.

During the crushing second wave of the pandemic in May 2021, another 3,492 undertrial prisoners and 845 convicts were released, but they were not given any date to surrender.

“As part of keeping check on crime and criminals, our police teams are on the lookout for such fugitives. Police are checking with informers to ensure that any prisoner, who has come out of prison, is not active in crime. We take stern action against such fugitives,” said deputy commissioner of police and Delhi Police spokesperson, Chinmoy Biswal,

In some cases, police said it averted further crime by putting these “parole jumpers” back in jail. On September 10, another “parole jumper”, Sudhir Kumar Paswan, was arrested from the New Delhi railway station minutes after he stepped off the train from his village in Bihar -- thanks to an elaborate inducement scheme by the police.

Paswan, a convict in a kidnapping and rape case, was supposed to surrender in March 2021 but instead skipped parole and went to Bihar.

Trying to trace him, police teams posed as jail officers and called Paswan’s brother.

“The brother was contacted and was told by the team that the jail authorities had sent a payment of ₹1.5 lakh to him as wages for the work he had done in jail. Sudhir returned to Delhi on being contacted by his brother and was arrested on September 9. He has been sent back to Mandoli jail,” said deputy commissioner of police(North) Anto Alphonse .

To be sure, prisoners who work in different factories of Delhi’s Tihar jail receive daily wages, which is saved in their bank account.

Some fugitives continued to commit crimes and were arrested more than once while on the run. On August 29, the crime branch arrested a man named Sunder Singh, who was released from Tihar in April 2020. Singh who did not surrender in February 2021 because he was involved in at least five robberies since last year, said police.

He was arrested by Ghaziabad Police in April 2021 for a robbery at Sihani Gate but was released on bail within a month, resuming his crimes. Police said on August 29, they received tip off about Singh, and arrested him from Loni.