Thrissur: In a shocking revelation that is shameful to the State Jail Department, an inmate, who is undergoing punishment for keeping arms illegally at his disposal, has made around 2,000 phone calls from the Viyyur Central Jail to the outside world in just five months' time.
The contents of the confidential report submitted by the Irinjalakuda police to this effect to the court one-and-a-half-year ago have now come open. The phone calls were traced by the police to the mobile tower at Padukkatt in Viyyur.
The mobile phone was that of Rajeev of Geethalayam at Venjaramoodu in Thiruvananthapuram district. Apart from possessing a gun illegally, Rajeev is also an accused in a harassment case.
The case originated after he made a call to a trader from Mala, demanding Rs.25 lakh. Joshi Perappodan, the trader from Mala, had complained to the police that Rajeev was making threatening calls to him from the central jail.
Rajeev had threatened him of abducting his child if he failed to give Rs 25 lakh. Rajeev called him from six different phone numbers and threatened him. Of these phone numbers, two reportedly belonged to jail employees.
The police first filed the case and then started tracing the origins of the phone calls. Then the police came to know that 2,000 illegal phone calls were made by the jail inmates in just five months.
A report was filed before the court. But when the charge sheet was filed, there were no serious allegations against Rajeev. No further probe was conducted about the phone calls made from the jail.
The court ordered a fresh probe when the complainant filed a case, alleging the police's laxity in conducting a fair probe. But even after, no headway has been made in the investigation.
300 calls from one phone in January
In January 2019, Rajeev called 300 times to those residing outside the jail from the mobile number beginning with number '999520'.
The total number of calls, including the calls from other mobile phones too, came above 450-mark in January itself. The phone calls were either extortion calls or 'quotation' calls linked to the goons operating in various places.
Sudhakaran targets Pinarayi
The Congress on Tuesday criticised Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan over his "silence" regarding the allegedly numerous calls made by a notorious criminal, serving a life term for the murder of a rebel Marxist leader in 2012, from Viyyur central jail, saying such convicts were being treated as "guests of the state."
KPCC President K Sudhakaran told reporters that there was no point in raising the issue with the CM or the government as the administration was acting 'blind and deaf" in relation to this issue, which has been widely reported and discussed.
He was referring to the recent controversy over numerous phone calls being allegedly made by Kodi Suni, convicted and awarded life term for hacking to death Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) founder T P Chandrasekharan.
Sudhakaran, the Lok Sabha MP from Kannur, said such instances of prisoners making numerous calls from inside jails was happening with the active knowledge and support of the state and therefore, there was no point in complaining about it to the government.
