23 surgical blades, smartphones, drugs recovered from Tihar inmate in Delhi

The possessions were recovered from one of the inmates after jail staff noticed suspicious movement central jail number 3 on Thursday morning. The matter has been reported to the police for further action.

Officials of the Tihar jail in Delhi have recovered as many as 23 surgical blades, smartphones, drugs, SIM cards from an inmate. The incident happened on Thursday morning when the staff of the central jail number 3 noticed suspicious movements of some inmates and frisked them.

Picture showing seized drugs, mobiles, and other possessions. (ANI)

“On 9th March at about 6:40am, staff of Central Jail No 3, Tihar, on noticing suspicious movement of some inmates, intercepted them and after a thorough body search recovered a packet containing 23 surgical blades, drugs, two touch screen phones, a SIM card and other related contrabands from possession of one,” a prison official told news agency ANI.

The officials said further investigation revealed the packet was thrown inside the jail over the walls of an adjoining jail. “The inmate who threw the packet inside has been identified,” the official added.

Last month, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal approved an expert committee to find a solution to phone menace in the jails located in the national capital. The 10-member committee, headed by the director general (prisons), is assigned to find the best signal jammers in a bid to prevent inmates from using mobile phones.

Other than Tihar, Delhi has two more prison complexes, Rohini and Mandoli which house around 18,000 inmates currently.

The government's order came after an alarming report that at least 348 cell phones were recovered from prisoners across the three complexes in just the previous two months. The numbers are unusually high because a prison official told Hindustan Times earlier that usually about 100-200 phones are recovered by the police in a year during raids in these complexes.