Over a dozen persons accused of carrying out and conspiring in the May 13, 2008 bomb blasts in Jaipur were allegedly brutally thrashed in the Central Jail Jaipur, where they have been kept in judicial custody for more than a year, when they sought permission to offer prayers along with other prisoners in the jail compound on Eid-ul-Fitr on September 21. Two of the accused booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act – Munawwar Hussain and Nazakat – have alleged in their complaint to the higher prison authorities that the jail officials, incensed over a tiff with them on their request to join Eid prayers earlier in the day, dragged them out of their cells on Monday evening with the help of other “hardcore prisoners” and beat them with batons and other objects. The jail officials and policemen on duty stormed into the cells on the pretext of searching incriminating material and desecrated religious scriptures of the accused, according to the written complaint. “We found holy books strewn across the floor with the muddy footprints on them when we returned to the cells,” it said.
All the accused are lodged in cramped and dingy cells without ventilation, away from other prisoners in the Central Jail, and are not allowed to mingle with other prison inmates. The only time they can see the sunlight is three hours in the afternoon when they are taken out to an open veranda daily.
Director-General of Prisons Omendra Bharadwaj has ordered a departmental inquiry and transferred jailer Ashok Gaur to Ajmer and deputy jailer Bhairon Singh to Udaipur. Mr. Bharadwaj said he had himself asked for a written complaint when a “group of citizens” met him on September 24 and brought the incident to his notice. A six-member delegation of Rajasthan Muslim Forum, accompanied by former Congress MLA M. Mahir Azad, had raised the issue with him and demanded immediate action in the matter. The delegation was allowed to meet some of the accused in the prison compound and get their version. The accused reportedly told the delegation members that they were kept in isolation and constantly taunted for their religious beliefs and their alleged role in the blasts. Jamaat-e-Islami Hind State president Mohammed Salim, one of the activists who met the accused, said the complaint also made a mention of the “daily torture” of all of them for 15 continuous days in October last year, when they were blindfolded and mercilessly beaten up.
Muslim groups in Rajasthan have charged the Congress-led government with carrying forward the BJP regime’s “communal agenda.” At a press conference in Jaipur on September 26, representatives of the Forum said this “perfunctory action” of shunting out the officials was inadequate and demanded immediate suspension of the guilty and the institution of a judicial inquiry. “The cruel torture of the accused, who are in judicial custody and awaiting trial, is not only a violation of the Rajasthan Prison Rules, 1961, but also a serious infringement of their legal rights. It calls for urgent initiation of criminal proceedings,” Mohammed Salim said. The Forum said the departmental inquiry, a routine procedure, was unlikely to bring out the truth; only a judicial probe could fix the responsibility for the crime and reveal the “inhuman conditions” in which the accused were lodged.