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Tihar jail staff tired of celebrity inmates
Delhi's crowded Tihar Jail is getting to host more high-profile criminals, politicians and their kin, thanks to faster court decisions spurred by a vigilant media. But the presence of so many notables is proving a headache for jail authorities.
- IANS
- Published: 01:13 February 24, 2008
New Delhi: Delhi's crowded Tihar Jail is getting to host more high-profile criminals, politicians and their kin, thanks to faster court decisions spurred by a vigilant media. But the presence of so many notables is proving a headache for jail authorities.
Tihar, one of Asia's largest jails, at present has as inmates at least five politicians, including two MPs, and relatives of politicians as well as criminals with a media profile.
The latest to enter the portals of the prison, which houses more than 11,500 inmates against a capacity of 6,250, is former Congress leader Romesh Sharma who was sentenced this week to life imprisonment for the murder of his fashion designer girlfriend Kunjum Bhudhiraja in 1999.
While the public is happy whenever a guilty politician is sent to jail, it increases the workload for the already harassed prison officials.
The two MPs are Pappu Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Babubhai Katara of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
While Pappu Yadav, alias Rajan Tiwari, is in Jail No 3 serving a life term for his involvement in the murder of trade union leader Ajit Sarkar in 1998, Katara is facing trial for trying to take a woman and a boy out of the country fraudulently on the passports of his wife and son. Katara is cooling his heels in Jail No 4.
The other notables are former Delhi councillor Sharda Jain, who was given a life term last year for her role in the sensational murder of city councillor Atma Ram Gupta five years ago, and former Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma, sentenced to the gallows for killing his wife Naina Sahni in 1995 and trying to dispose of her body in the oven of a hotel in what came to be known as the infamous "Tandoor case".
Sharma is in Jail No 2. His appeal against the death sentence is still pending before the apex court .
"The number of such under-trials and convicts has shot up in recent years. A few years ago we would hardly get any politicians or their kin and their security was not of much concern to us. Now we get a high-profile criminal or such accused almost every month," a jail official said on condition of anonymity.
Among the kin of politicians are Manu Sharma aka Siddharth Vashisht, son of former Congress leader Venod Sharma, serving life for gunning down well-known model Jessica Lall in April 1999.
He is in Jail No 2. His friend, Vikas Yadav, son of another politician D.P. Yadav, is facing trial in the murder of business executive Nitish Katara in 2002.
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