Gurgaon prison: Ground for quot;extortion racketsquot;

GURGAON, August 28: The overcrowded district prison at Gurgaon which houses a number of hardened criminals has allegedly become a breedin...

GURGAON, August 28: The overcrowded district prison at Gurgaon which houses a number of hardened criminals has allegedly become a breeding ground for extortion rackets8217; operated at the behest of some of the hard-core criminals. One of the most common practices entails forcing new inmates to cough up money by their senior counterparts.

Refusal to do so invariably invites brutal assaults and other grossly inhumane punishments. A case in point is that of Attar Singh, an undertrial lodged in the prison on the charges of abducting a woman. Attar, who was once serving in the National Security Guards, was severely thrashed by a coterie of senior prisoners on Sunday after he reportedly refused to pay the money demanded.

The undertrial suffered multiple fractures and was left bleeding all over. The jail authorities, however, have termed the incident as a fight between two inmates8217;. The officials claimed that Attar Singh was first assaulted by a undertrial over some trivial issue, which soon turned into an unruly crowd taking him on.

Sources also mention the case of another undertrial, Swaminathan, who had allegedly embezzled lakhs of rupees before being locked up, who was also tortured by some of the more hardened criminals to part with a part of the booty. The undertrial was reportedly forced to clean up the jail toilets besides undergoing other forms of humiliation during his stay at the prison.

Despite these incidents, all that the jail officials would admit to is that they were aware of gangs of hardened criminals often indulging in bullying and monopolising at the expense of other more docile inmates but that most of the victims had been transferred to other jails. 8220;At present there are no problems. Generally, hardened criminals do not bother about indulging in such activities. These are prisoners who are being tried in 7 to 8 cases of murder, robbery etc. and it does not make much difference to them if they kill a couple of more people,8221; said a jail official.

Sources believe that these extortion rackets within the jail operate with the help of outside links8217; of the prisoners. Whenever a new prisoner comes, they say, the old baddies8217; scrutinise his credentials and fix the amount of cash expected from him on that basis. If the inmate cannot pay up or refuses to do so, he is subjected to physical punishment.

Jail officials however maintain that the brawls among the inmates occur mainly because of paucity of space in the prison or due to ego clashes. 8220;We have about 450 prisoners in 5 barracks whereas the capacity of this prison is 120 inmates only. The new entrants will naturally come in conflict with the hardened criminals already residing there,8221; said an official. Senior officials are of the view that the jail staff cannot prevent these scuffles all the time since they have limited man power.