Maha prison dept orders inquiry into Mogul’s parole jump

Crime branch activates informer network to locate Pallavi Purkayastha’s murderer Sajjad Mogul

The prison department of Maharashtra has ordered an internal inquiry into convict Sajjad Mogul’s parole jump from Nashik Central jail last month.

Sajjad Mogul with police personal at Arthur Road Jail. Mogul was arrested and sentenced to life for murdering advocate Pallavi Purkayastha. (HT Photo)

Mogul was arrested and sentenced to life in advocate Pallavi Purkayastha murder. She was murdered at Wadala’s Himalayan Heights on August 9, 2012.

Mogul was sentenced to life imprisonment in July 2014 for the murder and after sentencing by a city sessions court, he was lodged in the Nashik central jail. Sources said the parole was applied by Mogul saying his mother was not well and after which the jail officials had asked for the medical reports of his mother, which were presented to the department by his relatives.

Read: Mumbai lawyer Pallavi’s killer gets life imprisonment

The jail officials concerned had verified the medical reports, following which he was granted parole on humanitarian grounds. The conditions set before him was he would report to a local police station in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

Sources said he did not report back to the jail by the end of May following which the prison department filed a case at Nashik Road police station.

It was transferred to J&K police, as he jumped the parole from there. An officer with the Nashik police said the case was forwarded to the police station in J&K. The officers said the J&K police should have ensured that the convict reported to them. And they should have alerted the prison department in Maharashtra on his absence, a source said.

Additional director general of prisons BK Upadhyay said the parole was sanctioned by the divisional commissioner, but the department initiated an inquiry into the procedure that was followed to grant parole to the convict.

“We have spoken to the Nashik police commissioner on the issue and the police are also trying to find out what happened and they are also searching for the missing convict,” he added.