Out of jail after seven years, Divya Pahuja says she is getting used to being outside prison

Filing for bail since 2016, Pahuja’s bail pleas were rejected five times by various courts before her sixth attempt was successful. In June, the Bombay High Court granted bail to Pahuja on grounds including the delayed trial. While the police has cited 171 witnesses in its chargesheet, only one was examined till she was granted bail.

Aware that her release on bail does not mean complete freedom as the trial against her continues on charges including murder, Pahuja says that the prolonged incarceration without a trial left her feeling helpless. “I did not know when the trial would start, when it would end. What happens if an accused is cleared of all charges after being in jail for such a long time? The time spent in jail will not come back or be compensated,” Pahuja, now 26, said, while in Mumbai attending a court hearing of the case.

Haryana-based gangster, Sandeep Gadoli was killed in an alleged fake encounter in a Mumbai hotel. (File photo)

Before her arrest, Pahuja lived in Haryana with her parents and younger sister. In her first year B Com, she also worked as a model. The police claim that she was accompanying Gadoli to Mumbai and through her mother was giving information to the accused Haryana cops about their whereabouts. Released after seven years, Pahuja says that she now intends to study law. “I read a lot of books on law to understand my case better. It has left me interested in the profession. I will enrol to study law soon and want to become like my lawyer Sana because of whom I got bail,” Pahuja says about her lawyer Sana Raees Khan, who argued her bail before the high court.

Pahuja recalls how the first thing that made her realise that she was in jail was the strip search each person is subjected to on their entry. She was lodged at Byculla jail since 2016. “It was humiliating. I was very young, had no criminal antecedents,” she said. She added that for the initial seven months, she did not eat jail food. “I was told that once the chargesheet is filed, I had a chance of getting bail. I did not want to get used to jail life, it felt temporary. I ate some snacks available in the canteen for all those months,” she said. It was when her first bail was rejected five months after her arrest that Pahuja began settling in jail. She took to writing letters to her father from being a regular user of social media as a teenager.

She said that given her long stint in jail, she also spoke up a few times about the needs of prisoners including during the one visit of the National Commission of Women to Byculla jail. She said that while she spoke about the quality of food being served to the prisoners by showing them a roti served to them, prison officials later made her cook rotis for a few days for the complaint. She said that while authorities ensured she got access to hospital, psychiatrists and counsellors as being incarcerated had taken a toll on her physical and mental health, it was the loss of dignity in jail that affected her most.

“I was not involved in committing the murder. I know I am yet to be cleared of the charges. I have to continue to attend the trial and ensure I do not have to return to prison,” she said.