History-sheeter Ajju Kaniyo murdered inside jail

Vadodara: In the first such incident inside the the high-security Vadodara Central Jail, notorious criminal Azharuddin Sindhi alias Ajju Kaniyo was murdered by a chain-snatcher who slit his throat with a sharp-edged piece of tin, on Wednesday morning.
Kaniyo, who was lodged in the jail for over a month after being on run for 65 days, had a verbal spat with the assailant Sunil alias Sahil Parmar, who had been harbouring a bitter grudge over his bossy and intimidating behaviour.
“Parmar admitted that he was angry with Kaniyo because of his bossy attitude. Kaniyo had told him to keep his gaze grounded to the floor while roaming around in yard 12 where they were lodged and had abused him a couple of times,” said inspector V N Mahida of Raopura police station.
Parmar was booked for robbery and later murder charges were also invoked against him after the person whose chain he snatched died in the melee two years ago. He was booked by Panigate police station.
According to police, Kaniyo and Parmar had a brief altercation outside his barrack in yard 12 on October 12. However, things did not reach a flash point then as another inmate named Shiva Mahalingam Pillai alias Aftab asked Parmar not to escalate the matter.
However, on Wednesday morning, Parmar and another prisoner Kiran Solanki alias Bodiyo attacked Kaniyo and Mohsin Khan Pathan, an undertrial from Surat.
Pathan, who is the complainant in this case, told police that he and Kaniyo had gone to make a phone call at the jail’s phone booth, but as there was a long queue of the prisoners, they were returning to their barracks.
While passing by barrack 4, Parmar attacked Kaniyo from behind and a scuffle ensued.
Parmar slit Kaniyo’s throat with a piece of tin and Pathan too was attacked in a similar way by Bodiyo.
Hearing the ruckus, the jail sepoys rushed to intervene and some of them too sustained minor injuries.
Kaniyo and Pathan were taken to jail’s dispensary but as the former’s wound was deeper, he was rushed to SSG Hospital where he succumbed. Pathan suffered injuries on his hand and head, but they were not very serious.
Pathan has been lodged in the jail for the past five years after being charge-sheeted by the National Investigation Agency in the sensational Bharuch double murder case of Shirish Bangali, a former BJP president for Bharuch and Pragnesh Mistry, general secretary of the Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha, in 2016.
TOI tried contacting the additional director general of police (Prisons) Dr KLN Rao as well as the jail superintendent of Vadodara Central Jail, but neither of them answered the calls nor replied to the text message.
Aftab’s role has not been known in the Kaniyo’s murder and he is yet to be questioned.