Bengaluru: Prison inmates pay money to get anything they want, says former DG&IGP

Bengaluru: Former central vigilance commissioner and former DG&IGP R. Sri Kumar, speaking to Deccan Chronicle on the recent controversy surrounding Parappana Agrahara Central Prison, said, “Inmates pay money to get anything they want. It is quite common.”

Mr Sri Kumar recounted how he came across fake stamp paper scam mastermind Abdul Karim Telgi using a telephone when he went to interrogate the convict in connection with the stamp paper scam. “He asked permission for Namaz. But he went and started speaking over phone doing his usual business. Of course, we got his telephone tapped and got a lot of information in the case. But irregularities have been happening in jails for quite long time,” he said. In connection with theirregularities that happened in early 2000s, a jailer was arrested. He was recently acquitted in the case, he explained.

Asked whether the one member investigation team, headed by former IAS officer Vinay Kumar would do justice, he said, “He will have to speak based on whatever evidence he lays his hands on, according to his conscience. When the bosses visit these jails, everything might be alright. But, one has to be eternally vigilant to track the irregularities or to know what's going on.”

He said multiple CCTV network system is one of the proposals made. 

“One CCTV network is with the jailer and the other should be with the nearest police station. Then, two more networks, one with the prisons DG and the other with DG intelligence, should be installed. That is because we have terrorists and hardcore criminals in the prisons. Intelligence should be kept in the loop,” he said.