Spate of transfers in Delhi’s Tihar jail, a week after inmate’s suspected murder

Ankit Gujjar, an alleged top gangster, was found dead in his cell in jail number 3 last Wednesday. Police registered a case of murder against a deputy jail superintendent and are probing the role of his junior officers as well.

Following the suspected murder of a prisoner — he was found dead in his cell — in Tihar jail last week, the jail administration on Thursday issued transfer orders to several jail superintendents, in the wake of a high-ranking jail official being named as a suspect in the murder case.

Police registered a case of murder under the Indian Penal Code and named the deputy superintendent as an accused, among others, but are yet to arrest anyone. (HT file photo)

Ankit Gujjar, an alleged top gangster, was found dead in his cell in jail number 3 last Wednesday. Police registered a case of murder against a deputy jail superintendent and are probing the role of his junior officers as well.

Prisons director general Sandeep Goel confirmed the spate of transfers and said,” The superintendent of jail 3 has been transferred to the headquarters. The officer who was at the headquarters has been transferred to Rohini. The Rohini superintendent has been transferred to jail 5, while the officer who headed jail 5 is now in charge of jail 3.”

After Gujjar’s death, four officers of jail 3, including the deputy superintendent, were transferred pending investigation.

In their statement to police, the jail officers of jail 3 said that during a search of Gujjar’s cell on August 3, they seized a cellphone, data cable and a knife. While they were carrying out the search, Gujjar assaulted the deputy superintendent after which the jail officers beat him with “minimum force”. Gujjar was then transferred to another cell and was found unconscious the following morning during roll call. He was rushed to the jail hospital where he was declared brought dead, they told the police.

Police registered a case of murder under the Indian Penal Code and named the deputy superintendent as an accused, among others, but are yet to arrest anyone.

Until his arrest in August 2020, Gujjar, 29, was one of western Uttar Pradesh’s most wanted criminals, police said. Accused in at least eight murder cases, among others, Gujjar carried a reward of ₹1.25 lakh at the time of his arrest --- ₹1 lakh was announced by the Uttar Pradesh Police and ₹25,000 by Delhi Police.

Gujjar, a resident of Baghpat , was arrested by UP Police in 2015 but he came out on bail in 2019. He then shifted his operations to Delhi and joined hands with Delhi gangster Rohit Chaudhary to form the “Chaudhary-Gujjar gang”. In July 2019, Gujjar shot dead a local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Vinod Pandit as he was contesting the panchayat elections from Chandi Nagar in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh.

This is not the first instance of an inmate being killed in Tihar. Only last month, the Delhi high court had asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe an inmate’s murder that took place in May. Delhi Police arrested four Tihar inmates for that murder, but the family of the dead prisoner, Srikant Swami, accused jail officers of being responsible for his murder, police said.