Pak inmate serving life term killed in Jaipur jail

JAIPUR: A Pakistani national, Shakreullah alias Mohammad Hanif, serving a life term in Jaipur Central Jail, was killed on Wednesday in a clash among inmates ostensibly over loud music on TV at a heavily guarded barracks for serious offenders, officials said.

Shakreullah, 45, was attacked around 1.30pm with a stone slab on which the TV was kept, after an argument between him and four inmates, DG (Jail) N R K Reddy said. “He was killed on the spot after being hit on the head. Guards found Shakreullah lying dead on the floor,” Reddy told TOI.

The prisoner, from Sialkot, had been convicted under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act by a Jaipur court in November 2017. Reddy and city police commissioner Anand Shrivastava said there were nine inmates in the TV room (barrack number 58).

Interrogations revealed that a south Indian movie had just concluded when an inmate switched to a channel playing a song. “Shakreullah reportedly objected to the loud music, saying he wanted to take a nap. This led to a spat, followed by a scuffle, with four inmates. One of them pulled out the stone slab and hit the foreign national,” Reddy said.

An alert was sounded around 1.40 pm, and security guards and jailers rushed to the barrack. Soon, Reddy, ACS (Home) Rajeev Swarup and Shrivastava also reached the spot.

The two prime suspects, one of whom is believed to have hit Shakreullah, are Ajeet Singh, serving a life term for the rape of a Japanese tourist in Jaipur, and Kulwinder Singh, who was also convicted for a murder. According to Shrivastava, the ATS had in 2010 busted a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) module spanning across several prisons of Rajasthan and other states. FIR number 23/2010 was registered by the ATS in the same case. As the hunt began, the sleuths raided multiple locations and nabbed eight accused, including Shakreullah, who was in Punjab’s Nabha jail.