The suspension of Mandya jail superintendent on Saturday, on charges of assisting a notorious gangster to run his operations from within the prison cell, has once again revealed the nexus between jail authorities and prison inmates.
Jail Superintendent Sathish, who was awarded the Chief Minister’s medal, was suspended on Saturday for his role in providing mobile phones and other perks to the feared gangster Shivakumar alias Danger Shiva.
A team of police officials led by Mandya Superintendent of Police, C H Sudheer Kumar Reddy, raided Danger Shiva’s cell, on Friday and found a cell phone hidden in the cell.
The police seized the phone and took Danger Shiva in for questioning. “While we were going through the call records, we found that he had made numerous calls to just one phone. When we traced it, we found that Danger Shiva was constantly making calls to a female gang lord named Bhagya,” SP Reddy said.
The Police went through the visitor logs and found that Don Bhagya had visited Danger Shiva many times over the years and it was here that their friendship bloomed.
“The duo had plotted the abduction of another gangster from the rival faction named Market Kumar. The larger question was how did Danger get the mobile phone. He was also on the receiving end of many other perks like food from restaurants and many others on those lines,” the SP added.
It was revealed later that Danger Shiva had befriended the Jail Superintendent Sathish, who was responsible for ensuring that he lived in comfort within prison walls.
“He would manage to smuggle drugs into the prison. He had made Satish the front through which he was running his gang’s operations from within the prison,” SP Reddy said.
Danger Shiva was lodged in the Mandya District Prison in 2012 after he was convicted for the murder of a businessman and Congress Leader, HP Nagendra from Mandya. His gang members had attacked the Congress leader with machetes in broad daylight, in Bengaluru on December 10, 2007.
The notorious gangster, at the time, had ordered the hit on Nagendra whilst he was lodged in the Ramanagara Prison for the murder of a rival, Jadeja Ravi.
“He has a history of running operations from within the prison,” the SP said.
The police are probing the extent of Shiva’s operations and are now searching for Don Bhagya.
“We will probe the matter thoroughly to ascertain who else was involved in this operation. Once we trace Bhagya, it will be easier to crackdown his operations in the city,” Reddy added.
Danger Shiva has now been transferred to the Bellary District Prison.