There were scuffles among jail inmates earlier too but the level of indiscipline has increased now leading to fatal attacks, primarily because of incompetent officers, untrained personnel and government apathy, a former official said on Friday, after two gangsters were killed inside the Tihar jail.
“The current state of affairs shows the (prison) management is going downhill, and unless drastic changes are made to the staff structure and overall functioning of the prison, such instances are here to stay,” former public relations officer of the Delhi Prisons Department Sunil Gupta told PTI.
Gupta, now an author and expert in prison administration, pitched for a training school for jail staffers and the appointment of officers in uniform, instead of civil officers, to higher posts.
Gangster Tillu Tajpuriya was stabbed to death by four rival gang members inside the Tihar jail early Tuesday.
Tajpuriya’s gruesome killing — he was stabbed “92 times” using improvised weapons cut from an iron grille — came less than a month after another gangster, Prince Tewatia, was killed inside the high-security prison by members of a rival gang.
In an interview with PTI, Gupta said, “While negligence has always been there, one of the most pressing problems that, in my view, has led to the present situation is the deputation of incompetent officers at command posts. What Tihar needs right now are young and energetic officers.” “A majority of the jail staff are DANICS (Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Services) officers. Instead of fresh recruits, promotee DANICS personnel are deputed, which leads to maladministration as they do not possess the requisite competence and expertise to handle jail affairs. Also, there is a lack of coordination between staff members,” he said.
Kiran Bedi, a former director general of Tihar, said gangsters should be kept alone in a cell and the visitor hours for them should be different from other prisoners.
Gupta said that if rival gang members are kept in the same cell or barrack, frictions are bound to happen.
To curb prisoner fights, inmates in cells and barracks should be frisked every day and surprise checks should be carried out under the supervision of senior officers, he said.
“During my tenure, such checks were the norm and still are, but they should now be intensified. In case of negligence or collusion, responsibility should be fixed on the jail official concerned and departmental action should be taken. Moreover, there is no training centre for the prison staff to help them understand the rule of law and the human rights of inmates, and steps should be taken in this regard,” he said.
Gupta, who served as a law officer and spokesperson at Tihar Jail for almost four decades, said it would be wrong to say that such incidents didn’t occur in the past.
“During my tenure, there were scuffles too. Inmate fights are common as jails are known as the garbage dumps of a civilised society, but the level of indiscipline inside Tihar has undoubtedly increased,” he said.
Jails have always been a low-priority area as governments only plan to build either hospitals or schools. Such incidents are bound to occur unless more staffers are deployed in jails. If adequate attention is not given to jails, especially Tihar as it houses some of the most high-profile undertrials and convicts, things will go wrong, he stated.
“We should have proper training for the staff and we should establish a jail training school for freshers and the jail staff. Our staff is untrained, unprofessional and as a result such incidents are happening.
“The most important post of the jail is jail superintendent on which we need some uniform person, but interestingly in Delhi, these posts are occupied by allied civil services people. For jail superintendent, we should have someone from the paramilitary force,” he said.
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