Tajpuria case: Court questions why police took so long to act despite CCTV cameras
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday remarked that the brutal murder inside the Tihar prison has shaken its judicial conscience while questioning the Tihar jail authorities about how dreaded gangster Tillu Tajpuria was killed by a rival gang inside the high-security jail while cops watched the incident.
Justice Jasmeet Singh asked why the security personnel deployed in the jail premises do not have walkie-talkies for communication and termed it as unacceptable.
“What bothers me is that it is watched on CCTV cameras. How can the police take so much time that it cannot be stopped while the incident is happening,” the court said asking the counsel for the state as to what is the distance between the jail and the surveillance area. “It shakes my judicial conscience!” the judge said.
“It shakes everybody’s conscience, it does shake and we are taking positive steps,” responded the counsel. The high court was hearing a petition filed by Tajpuriya’s father and brother seeking a CBI investigation into the “brutal murder” inside the Tihar Jail premises on May 2.
Additional Standing Counsel Rahul Tyagi, representing the state, said the surveillance area is 600 metres away from the jail and told the court that inmates involved in the incident have been arrested for Tajpuria’s murder. “I am assuring you that if someone from outside was involved, action will also be taken against them,” he said.
“They don’t have walkie-talkies? Why? What is the point? So every time an incident happens, the person from surveillance goes to the jail which is 600 metres away,” the judge asked the government lawyer.
Tyagi said it is against the jail manual to carry weapons inside and now the authorities are exploring the possibility of arming them. “I know this is a brutal incident but our reaction should not be immediate. Let us take a cool and calculated decision… Hard cases make bad laws. It should not get a knee-jerk reaction,” the state’s counsel submitted.
Unconvinced, the court asked why the authorities have to wait for any such incident to happen to take action and said the reaction has to be commensurate with the offence. “Why do we have to wait for an incident to happen and then we say that hard cases make bad laws and knee-jerk reactions? How is it fair?
Think about it from a rational person’s point of view. You have a prison which is 600 metres away from your surveillance (area). The idea of surveillance is to see the movement of the prisoners, so that these kinds of incidents don’t take place,” the judge said.