New Delhi, August 31, 2021 (PPI-OT):A prisoner identified as Ankit Gujjar died inside India’s infamous Tihar jail from inhuman police torture has raised the alarm bells for the safety of a large number of Kashmiri Hurriyat detainees lodged in the jail. The police said they have recorded the statement of several inmates and jail employees during the probe.
“The initial investigation has revealed that the jail authority was trying to shift 29-year-old Gujjar’s. He was not ready to shift and allegedly slapped the deputy superintendent, following which the Indian personal assaulted him,” a senior police officer confirmed. Gujjar was found dead inside his cell in Tihar jail while two of his former cellmates, who were lodged in an adjacent lockup, were found injured on August 4.
Tihar officials had earlier said the three inmates were lodged in the same cell till August 3 night when they had a fight with the jail staff after a mobile phone was found from outside their cell. The jail staff then shifted Gujjar to another cell from where his body was recovered the next morning, they had said.
Following the incident, four jail officials, including the deputy superintendent, were suspended after the incident. The Delhi Police Special Cell had arrested a 28-year-old man named Satender alias Satte who was allegedly planning to harm a senior jail official to avenge Gujjar’s death.
Gujjar, who belonged to Sunder Bhati gang, was arrested from Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida along with three others in connection with the murder of BJP leader Vijay Pandit in 2014. Pandit was shot dead by four persons, including Gujjar, in Dabri on the night of June 7, 2014.
Whosoever Ankit Gujjar was and in which case he was detained, the fact of the matter is that he was, after all, a detainee whose safety lied with the jail authorities, said Hurriyat leaders and activists in Srinagar while expressing concern over the safety of Muhammad Yasin Malik, Shabbir Ahmad Shah, Aasiya Andrabi and dozen others pro-freedom leaders and activists caged in the Delhi’s infamous jail.
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