An audacious murder inside India’s largest prison complex that saw a gangster being stabbed nearly 100 times by members of a rival gang should set alarm bells ringing. But that it was the second such killing in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in 18 days should also indicate that security protocols are either effete or being flagrantly violated, and demand urgent corrections from the authorities.
The murder of Sunil Balyan, better known as Tillu Tajpuria, inside Tihar in the early hours of Tuesday exposed several gaps in security inside a complex that houses some of India’s most notorious criminals. Four members of a rival gang managed to procure improvised weapons (steel spoons sharpened as knives), rip out iron bars that separated the two wings, slide to the ground floor using bed sheets, and surround Tajpuria before stabbing him in two separate attacks – all without getting caught by prison guards or on surveillance cameras.
The sequence of incidents spotlighted four major lapses. One, that prison authorities allowed rival gang members in the same jail and ward. Two, jail staff failed to check how, despite strict restrictions on items that a prisoner can carry, the four assailants managed to keep or procure steel spoons and sharpen them into knives. The jail manual says high-risk prisoners’ lodgings should be searched twice in the morning and evening every day. This was either not followed or shoddily executed. Three, the authorities didn’t follow norms that say high-risk prisoners should be shifted every month. And four, gaps in the monitoring of surveillance ensured that even though CCTV cameras were working on Tuesday, the live feed went unnoticed. This newspaper reported that Tihar neither has a dedicated team to keep a watch on the activities of the prisoners in real time nor trained video analysts for the purpose. At a time when gang rivalries appear to be peaking in the Capital, the authorities must plug these lacunae on priority to stop any more blood from being spilled.
