High court seeks mobile seizure data of 3 months from Punjab, Haryana
: The Punjab and Haryana high court has directed the two states and Chandigarh to provide data of seizures of mobile phones from jails during the last three months.
The high court bench of justice Anupinder Singh Grewal and justice Kirti Singh observed that it would be a matter of grave concern if the inmates, whether undertrials or convicts, are making extortion or threatening calls from within the precincts of the jail.
The directions from the court came as amicus curiae in a public interest litigation (PIL), Tanu Bedi, submitted that she has learnt that there have been several instances where extortion/ threatening calls have been made by or on behalf of the inmates. She added that one such matter pertaining to Punjab had also come before a single-judge bench also.
The court was hearing a PIL initiated in November 2023 taking note of reports that two interviews of the jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi were aired by a news channel when he was in jail. The interviews were telecast on March 14 and March 17 in 2023.
Following high court orders, the Punjab Police registered two FIRs to probe the interviews in December 2023.
During proceedings, the court has been seeking security infrastructure upgrade details from time to time from the state authorities.
About the instance highlighted by the amicus curiae, the state counsel had told court an instance was brought to the notice of a single-judge bench wherein witness had stated that he had received a threatening call on behalf of one of the accused but he was on bail.
“It would not be difficult for the authorities to sanitise the areas which house high-security inmates or those involved in henious crimes, including extortion. Such prisoners are stated to have been put up in a separate high-security zones. It is the need of the hour that the high-security zones should be immediately sanitised to ensure that there are no extortion/ threatening calls by the inmates,” the bench observed seeking data by April 15.