Blasts accused filed 21 cases against Sabarmati jail guards in two years

Jail authorities have claimed these complaints were lodged by the accused to “intimidate” them.

A report by deputy inspector general of police (jails) Amit Vishwakarma,who probed the recent jailbreak attempt allegedly by some of these accused,has noted that the jail staff knew of the tunnel being dug by the inmates attempting to escape but did not report it to higher authorities “out of fear”. The report also quoted a few jail guards as saying that the accused in the serial blasts case used to threaten to file court complaints against them.

Of these 21 complaints,at least seven were filed by those who are accused in the serial blasts case and also suspects in the attempted jailbreak case.

Iqbal Sheikh,Imran Sheikh,Usman Agarbattiwala,Ismail Mansuri,Hafiz Hussain Mulla,Nadeem Abdul and Saif-Ur-Rahman are among the complainants now being investigated in the jailbreak attempt case.

In June 2012,eight of the accused,including Iqbal Sheikh,lodged a complaint before the court of principal city civil and sessions judge Jyotsna Yagnik,the special court for 2008 blasts cases. “The jail authorities made a video-recording of our rooms as well as ourselves. We have never seen this kind of activity in the past three years,neither with us nor with any other prisoners in the jail. We fear this video might be used against us as it contains our photographs,” the complaint said.

In the same month,another group of accused alleged that jail authorities were biased when it came to frisking inmates. The group,including Umar Kabira,Amil Parvez and Samee Bagewadi,alleged that jail authorities humiliated them by stripping them on the pretext of frisking. They also said that other inmates,especially policemen like DG Vanzara and others,jailed in the encounter cases,were not frisked in the same manner.

A complaint lodged on December 10,2011,some of the blast accused claimed that during searches,officials threw their holy book on the ground in their barracks in Chhota Chakkar. In fact,the court in July 2012 warned authorities to respect the religious sentiments of the inmates. In May 2012,Hafiz Mulla,now a suspect in the attempted jailbreak case,lodged a complaint against a jail doctor,Deepak Mehta,claiming he had refused to treat him since he was an accused in the blasts case.

In September last year,three of the blasts case accused,including Ismail Mansuri,again a suspect in the attempted jailbreak case,lodged a complaint against VHP leader Babu Bajrangi,who was lodged in the jail after being handed life imprisonment in the Naroda Patia riots case. The complaint said Bajrangi was spreading communal feelings inside the jail.