Jail authorities claims of making jails free from the influence of terror groups have been exposed with arrest of three detained persons from Srinagar jail. This incident has provided some authenticity to the allegations that terror groups are operating freely from Srinagar Central jail with the alleged support of some officials.
On September 24, Babar Qadri was murdered at his residence in Hawal area of Srinagar by two masked men. These men entered into his residence with the pretext of clients with files in their hands. Qadri was told that those men wanted to discuss some accident-related case but fired at this head with pistols. Police have achieved a big breakthrough in the gruesome murder of Babar Qadri.
Babar Qadri’s murder was ordered from Srinagar Central Jail and the plan was accomplished by three terrorists named Shahid Shafi Mir of Khanyar, Zahid Farooq Khan of Nowhatta and Asif Bhat of Rehmania Colony in Srinagar. However, this is not the first time when terrorists have issued ‘orders’ to kill citizens with “clean” records from jails. It is widely alleged that some officials terror groups are operating freely from jails.
In the month of April this year, mobile phones and SIM cards were found from three inmates of the high-security Kot Bhalwal jail by police during a surprise search operation. Of these three inmates from whom the mobile phones and SIM cards were seized, one of them was a top Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) commander Abdul Rehman Mughal of Pakistan.
Many similar incidents of terrorist groups operating freely have also taken place in the past.
- In 1999, around a dozen Pakistani terrorists had dug 100 ft underground tunnel in Kot Bhawal jail from their barracks to escape. But jail officials caught them when they were hardly four or five feet away from their destination.
- In a similar raid in January 2019, police seized mobile phones, sharp-edged weapons and deep freezers from Kot Bhalwal jail. This high-security prison has more than 500 prisoners many of which are Pakistani terrorists.
- In February 2018, the Central government asked the J&K government to fully review the security measures inside jails and transportation of inmates after a Pakistan terrorist, Naved Jatt, managed to escape. He was, however, later killed in an encounter.
