This year, till March, 194 mobile phones have been recovered from prisoners and another 121 as unclaimed, taking the total number to 315.
As many as 1,547 mobile phones were recovered from Punjab jails in 2017, the year the Congress formed the government in the state by ending a 10-year rule of the SAD-BJP combine.
The data, compiled by Punjab jails department and accessed by The Indian Express, reveals that the number of mobile phones recovered last year was more than the collective seizure in the previous three years, that is 2016, 2015 and 2014. Between 2014 and 2016, 1,543 mobile phones were recovered from the jails. In 2013, there were 999 mobile phone recoveries and as per the data for the last five years, 38 per cent pertains to last year alone.
On Wednesday itself, newly sworn-in minister for jails in Punjab, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, had made a startling disclosure that he had received a congratulatory call from an inmate after his appointment. Randhawa on Wednesday had said that he would take up the issue of mobile phones in jail with the Centre. “I am observing the scenario. Mobile phones inside jails is true beyond any doubt. It is a big menace and it will not be addressed till the latest jammers are installed,” he had told The Indian Express on Wednesday, while making the disclosure.
“But, this cannot change overnight. This is cancer. I will remove the menace from Punjab jails gradually,” Randhawa further told The Indian Express.
On Thursday, Randhawa honoured Amritsar Central Jail DSP Balwinder Singh and Head Warder Bhagwant Singh for discharging their duty with full devotion and recovering a big cache of drugs from a water cooler recently.
Balwinder explained the modus operandi in the office of Randhawa before media persons with a packet, which he said was used to conceal mobile phones and tennis ball used to hide drugs. Calling it fenki (thrown) in jail parlance, the DSP said the mobile phones and drugs, wrapped in the packet and inside the tennis ball cavity, are thrown inside the prison.
The data reveals that from March 2017, the month, in which Amarinder Singh-led Congress government took over, till the end of the year, there were 1,309 cases of recovery of mobile phones in 26 jails of Punjab. In January and February 2017, when the code of conduct was in place for February 4 Assembly elections, there were more than 200 cases of mobile phone recoveries.
Maximum mobile phones (359) were recovered from Amritsar Central Jail, followed by Central Jail, Ludhiana, (225), Model Jail, Jalandhar, in Kapurthala (190), Model Jail, Faridkot, (120), Central Jail, Ferozepur, (105) and Central Jail, Hsohiarpur, (103).
This year, till March, 194 mobile phones have been recovered from prisoners and another 121 as unclaimed, taking the total number to 315. Out of these, 124 phones were recovered from barracks, pointing to the blatant use of phones inside the jails.
Jails in Punjab have a dubious history of use of mobile phones not only for criminal activities, but even dreaded gangsters uploading posts like birthday celebration inside the premises.
Jail officials say that close proximity of at least four prisons to residential areas was among the factors leading to mobile phones making their way inside.
Jails department Additional Director General of Police Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota said that connivance of jail staff could not be ruled out and that more than a dozen officials were sacked in this connection.