Sonu Punjaban overdoses in Tihar Jail after conviction

Geeta Arora alias Sonu Punjaban, who ran Delhi’s biggest prostitution ring for around decade till 2017, was hospitalised after she allegedly overdosed on medicines

Geeta Arora alias Sonu Punjaban, who ran Delhi’s biggest prostitution ring for around decade till 2017, was hospitalised after she allegedly overdosed on medicines at Tihar Jail on Thursday evening, hours after a Delhi court convicted her and her associate, Sandeep Bedwal, in a case of kidnapping and prostituting a minor girl, jail officials said. The court is slated to pronounce the quantum of punishment in the case on July 22.

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Director-general (Tihar prisons) Sandeep Goel said that Punjaban was lodged in Jail Number 6, a women’s jail. She consumed some medicines on Thursday evening and became drowsy. When she complained of uneasiness and told the jail officials that she had consumed some pills, she was taken to a dispensary within the premises.

“We shifted her to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital for better medical attention. She remained under doctors’ observation and was brought back to the jail after her condition stabilised and she was discharged. We still don’t know what medicines she consumed. Prima facie, it appears that she had collected medicines given to inmates for fever, headache and other minor health issues,” Goel said, adding that the jail authorities had informed Punjaban about her conviction a few hours before she overdosed.

No police complaint or case has been registered. “We are looking into why she took so many pills,” added the DG.

Punjaban, of Haryana’s Rohtak, was last arrested in December 2017 on the complaint of a girl, who alleged that she beat her, drugged her and forced her into prostitution. The girl was 13-years-old when was kidnapped by Punjaban’s associate Sandeep Bedwal in 2009 was and was sold and resold to a score of people in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, including Punjaban, the crime branch team probing the case stated in the charge-sheet filed in 2018.

On Thursday, a Delhi court noted that the prosecution has proved the charges against the two accused persons—Sonu Punjaban and Sandeep Bedwal—beyond a reasonable doubt. The court convicted Punjaban for the commission of offences such as procuration of minors, slavery, selling and buying minors for prostitution, poisoning, wrongful confinement and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act. Bedwal was convicted for kidnapping, procuration of minors, slavery, selling minors for prostitution, rape and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code.

In 2011, the police had booked Punjaban under charges of stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).