The services of Faridkot Modern Jail superintendent Joginder Pal was placed under suspension on Thursday a day after a clip of Canada-based gangster Sukha Duneke’s aide, making a video call from the jail, was widely shared on social media.
The information was shared by the state Jails Minister Harjot Singh Bains on his official Twitter handle stating that the government has suspended Faridkot Central Modern Jail Superintendent Joginder Pal over a video of a prisoner housed in the jail barracks going viral. “Faridkot Jail Superintendent is suspended after video of prisoner from jail went viral. AAP Govt has already issued strict orders to stop the usage of Mobile Phones in Jails,” he tweeted.
In the viral video, the accused, Karan Sharma, can be seen talking to someone on a video call from his barrack and he was also seen showing him around. In the video clip, only a few seconds long, Sharma is seen lip-syncing a Punjabi song that glorifies being in jail, inside the barracks. Later, the video was shared on Instagram. Notably, the police, a day before, had booked Karan Sharma, currently lodged in Faridkot jail, under the Prisons Act after a mobile phone was recovered from him.
Faridkot police, the previous month, had arrested three members of the Davinder Bambiha and Sukha Duneke group, including Karan Sharma, along with six pistols. He is currently in judicial custody. In a search operation launched after the video had gone viral, the police found five mobiles, two headphones, and two phone chargers from the bathroom of the jail. “A case under Section 42/52 of the Jail Act has been registered against inmates Karan Sharma, Subhan Khan, Jaspinder Singh, and Sukhdeep Singh after recovery of phones during the search operation,” said an official statement.
The development assumes significance as the incident took place in less than two weeks after Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s May 14 claim that his government had run a special drive at the jails between March 16 and May 10 and had seized 710 mobiles in order to put an end to the VIP culture in the state prisons.
Mann had said that the phones seized were used by gangsters and smugglers to run their rackets from inside the jails. He had also said that action will be taken against the jail staff who are involved in sneaking in the phones.
A senior government official said that the preliminary investigation by Deputy Inspector General (DIG), Jails, Ferozepur circle, found that there was negligence of duty on the part of the jail superintendent Joginder Pal. “An inquiry by DIG Prisons indicted the official for dereliction of duty leading to availability of phones to inmates. Departmental action against the officer is under consideration, so he has been suspended from duty with immediate effect,” said the official.
Faridkot Modern jail is infamous for the high use of mobile phones by its inmates and prisoners. On average, 100 to 150 mobile phones are recovered from the jail every year, putting the jail authorities under the scanner.
