Cover-up in UP? In govt orders, transfer for prisoner shot dead in jail

Muqim Kala, a prisoner who was shot dead in jail last month, has been listed for transfer to another jail by a government order.

Bringing the matter to light, RTI activist Nutan Thakur has alleged that the order, though dated April 15, had been uploaded on June 4 and this raised suspicions about the issue.

Kala, lodged in the Ragauli district jail of Chitrakoot in UP, was killed in an exchange of fire that left two other inmates dead on May 14.

On June 4, an order for the transfer of Kala from the district jail in Saharanpur to the district jail in Chitrakoot was uploaded on the state government’s website (shashanadesh.up.gov.in), which compiles all government orders from all departments. He was transferred on May 7 to Chitrakoot, though the order was uploaded nearly a month later.

The order, which is dated April 15, says that the transfer order was being made on ‘administrative grounds’. The order has been issued by a special secretary of the state government to the Director General, Prisons (administration and reforms).

Thakur said, “It is highly suspicious that a transfer order for a prisoner is put in the public domain after his death. This backdating of the order points to some kind of cover-up for which an investigation must be launched.”

Thakur also said that two years ago, Anshu Dixit, one of those killed in the firing, had issued a video expressing the fear that he would be killed by a rival gangster.

According to the official statement issued after the shoot-out, Dixit had killed Kala and another inmate Meraj Ali, and then had been killed in an exchange of fire with the jail police. Ali was an aide of Mukhtar Ansari.

Thakur said that there was no evidence of a formal transfer order for Kala being issued before the shoot-out and has expressed the apprehension that this could have been done without the necessary paperwork to orchestrate the shoot-out.

A departmental inquiry into the incident had found jailer Mahendra Pal and jail superintendent S.P. Tripathi guilty. These officials were suspended.

Kala had been active in western UP. His name had also figured in the exodus of Hindus from Kairana in 2016, when Akhilesh Yadav was the state’s chief minister.