Panipat jail to become first in Haryana to have in-house radio station

Panipat district jail has become the first jail in Haryana to have its own radio station which will be operated and run by the inmates.

For this project namely 'Tinka Jail Radio', the jail authorities have selected five inmates out of 940 prisoners and undertrials lodged in the district jail.

Joginder Deswal, deputy superintendent of Panipat Jail, said that the project has been initiated by Tinka Tinka Foundation headed by Dr Vartika Nanda. The selected inmates have been given proper training to run daily programmes for the studio set up inside the jail premises. He said that programmes on songs, news, local folk songs and songs on demand will be aired.

As per the jail authorities, the RJs included a 24 years old Afghanistan national Nimatullaha, who is in Panipat jail for illegal stay in India without a valid visa and is also facing a murder case in Pune, Maharastra.

As per the officials from the jail, Nimatullaha expressed his interest to become the RJ when the jail authorities took auditions of the prisoners.

He is fond of singing and also knows Hindi and Urdu. He has been included in the group for his interest of singing Hindi songs, an official said.

Besides, singing, he will also read news in Hindi and Urdu to keep his fellow inmates updated.

Another RJ is Surender Gurjar, who is convicted in a murder case and has been in jail for the past two years. Gurjar belongs to Patti Kalyana village of Panipat district. He sings Haryanvi Ragini and he has also created a team of his assistants who can play instruments for the background music.

Suresh Kumar, also convicted in a murder case, is another RJ and belongs to Panipat district. Suresh was selected to entertain inmates by singing Haryanvi folk songs.

Another RJ and artist Kashish Kumar is a guitarist and sings very well. As per the jail officials, Kashish sings Hindi songs and plays a guitar. He also sang in front of jail minister Ranjit Singh for the trial. “Kashish is a very good guitarist and also sings Bollywood numbers very well,” said Joginder Deswal, deputy superintendent of Panipat Jail.

The fifth RJ is Sarwan Kumar of Panipat who is facing a murder case. He was included in the team following his interest in singing.

For the technical support, the district jail also has an IT expert Dinesh Kumar, an undertrial in a murder case. Dinesh played a key role in setting up the studio in the jail. Dinesh belongs to Jind district and has a B. Tech degree in computer science.

Haryana DG prisons, K Selvaraj said that this is a good initiative that has been taken with the help of Tinka Tinka Foundation. He said that later it will be started in two more jails of Ambala and Faridabad. The officer said that the motive behind this initiative was to entertain, educate, inform and engage the prisoners in positive activities.

The mind behind the project, Dr Vartika Nanda, said that Panipat is the first jail of the state to have a radio station to be operated by inmates and for the inmates. She said that five inmates have been selected from the jail and they have been given proper training to run the studio. Officials said each jail barrack will have one speaker and radio programmes will be broadcast for an hour every day.

She said that later two stations will be set up in Faridabad and Ambala jails and total 21 inmates have been selected for the radio stations. She said that Tihar jail was first to start such a radio station in 2013. Following this, the foundation had started a station in Agra jail in July 2019.