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Journalism of Courage
AN ODD bend on a tin-sheet wall.
This is what alerted a search team at the Yerawada Central Prison in Pune to a cell phone that was stashed away in a bathroom used mainly by undertrials in the maximum-security facility.
The Nokia phone, and how it was smuggled in, is now the focus of two separate investigations by the Pune Police and the Maharashtra State Prison Administration, officials told The Indian Express. Security measures at the jail will now be reviewed, they said.
“Around 6 pm on April 1, a regular search of the prison premises was conducted by a team of three prison staffers. While searching a bathroom in Barrack 3 of Circle No. 1, the team saw an odd bend on the tin-sheet wall of the bathroom. The phone was found behind that bend,” a senior police officer told The Indian Express.
According to the initial probe, the phone’s battery was fully discharged, and there was no SIM card in it. “This suggests that the phone was being kept for common use by some of the inmates. It is not a smartphone but an old Nokia model. The phone is being sent for forensic analysis,” an officer from the Yerawada police station said.
A prison official said, “An internal inquiry is being conducted and senior officials are looking into it.”
The Yerawada jail is one of most overcrowded prisons in the state with a population of around 6,800 inmates as against its capacity of 2,500. In 2013 and 2016, multiple cell phones were found inside the jail leading to stricter security routines. In 2014, an attempt to smuggle marijuana into the prison was foiled, officials said.
