For this inmate at Alipore jail, luxury doesn’t stop at the door

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The status — Division-I — entitles Mitra to a chair, table and a lamp inside the cell number six on the first floor which will also have an LED installed for him; in terms of food, he would get bread, butter, eggs, fruits while his later-day meals would be prepared separately, which would include non-vegetarian items such as fish and meat nearly every day. One might even be allowed to have homemade food.

“We have 22,000 prisoners and Mitra is one of them. But he has been given a bed other than the facilities he would get by being a first-class prisoner,” admitted jail minister Haider Aziz Safwi. It is learnt that the prisoners who used to take care of him during his first round of stay here (from December 27, 2014 to February 10, 2015) have been called back to run errands for him.

For the TMC leader, Friday began a little after 8 am. For his lunch, he was served dosa which had come from his home (he had homemade chapati and curry for his dinner Thursday).

Several officials of the jail met the TMC leader during the day. Mitra also met some of the inmates, giving a patient hearing to their problems.
Reacting to the facilities he was getting over and above the entitlement of a Division-I prisoner, Safwi said that homemade food was allowed on request. “One has to drink regular water though but he could be purchasing packaged drinking water from the prison itself. One must remember that he had been the advisor for four years of one of the jail unions. So he could be putting those connections to get some extra facilities,” Safwi said.

Some of the other inmates who had received similar status in the past include Maoist leader Venkateshwara Reddy alias Telugu Dipak, PCAPA leader Chhatradhar Mahato and Aftab Ansari, the man behind the attack on the American Center in 2002.

On Thursday, soon after the high court order had arrived at the Alipore court, ACJM Alipore Sugata Roychowdhury had remanded Mitra to 14-days judicial custody.