Prices of mobile phones surge after police bust smuggling racket in Amritsar Central Jail

PK Jaiswar

Amritsar, June 6

With the arrest of eight persons including a lab technician, an IRB constable, a gangster and five jail inmates, the police yesterday claimed to have busted a racket involved in smuggling of mobiles inside the jail. Also, the continuous crackdown against illegal use of mobile phones inside the high-security Amritsar Central Jail has inflated its price, making it not viable for the jail inmates, if an investigation into the racket busted by the city police is anything to go by.

“The mobile phone, which was earlier available illegally for Rs 40,000, is now being sold at double the price,” said a senior police official wishing anonymity.

For the past five months, the Amritsar Central Jail authorities had launched regular search operations leading to the seizure of over 400 mobile phones from prisoners. A majority of them are keypad phones besides touch screen phones.

This set the alarm bell ringing following which Police Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar formed an SIT being supervised by Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Dr Darpan Ahluwalia to probe the seizures and modus operandi for sneaking prohibited material inside the jail complex.

The back-to-back search operations had stemmed the problem of use of illegal mobile phones inside the jail premises. “If we see key performance indicators (KPIs), the investigation of jail inmates said that the Rs 40,000 mobile phone is now available at Rs 80,000,” said an assistant jail superintendent. Also, the STD bills of mobile phone facility provided by the jail department under Prison Inmate Calling System has increased manifold. The prisoners can make calls on 10 prepaid numbers at nominal charges, he said.

The investigations into the racket by the police revealed that the jailbirds were smuggling prohibited material, including mobile phones, by hiding them in their body cavities, in construction material and food items besides throwing them in from outside.

Being located in a densely populated area, the throwing of mobile phones, dongles, chargers, cigarettes and ‘bidis’ has been a challenge for the jail authorities although the Punjab government had installed a harmonious call blocking system as pilot project here.

Nevertheless, the system became outdated as it used to block the signals up to the fourth generation broadband cellular network (4G) when it was introduced. But now, mobiles having 5G technology are being smuggled in.