Behind Bars: Prison Tales of India's Most Famous

Sunetra Choudhury

Description

‘If you steal 1,000 rupees, the hawaldar will beat the shit out of you and lock you up in a dungeon with no bulb or ventilation. If you steal 55,000 crores then you get to stay in a 40-foot cell which has four split units, internet, fax, mobile phones and a staff of 10 to clean your shoes and cook your food (in case it is not being delivered from Hyatt that particular day).’
They say that prison can be a great leveler – but does this apply if you are a VIP inmate in an Indian prison? Maybe not.
Based on extensive first-hand interviews with some of India’s most well-known inmates, award-winning journalist Sunetra Choudhury gives you a peek into the VIP prison life. It includes some interesting anecdotes about the lives of the rich and powerful prisoners: What does Peter Mukherjea do all day in his 4 x 4 cell in Arthur Road Jail? How does a 70-year-old Doon school alumnus who has spent more than 7 years in jail find a will to continue petitioning the state and fight his cases? Who came to visit Amar Singh during those 4 fateful days and why this scarred him and his wife for life, determining his future friends and allies?
Apart from certain depictions in popular culture or the occasional news reports, there is little information about how rules are bent and law takes a backseat when it comes to people like Sanjeev Nanda, Vikas and Vishal Yadav, Anca Varma and Manu Sharma, who were given special benefits and often sent out on parole and furlough for their good behaviour.
For the first time, India’s most famous prisoners share their own stories – from terror tales of ‘bladebaaz’ to torture chambers, from air conditioners in cells to food from five-star hotels, from cushy beds to private parties – and how they negotiate life in prison or the so-called ‘jail-ashram’.
With unbelievable details of the life inside prison and the sorry state of hundreds of undertrials languishing in jails, this book questions the primary purpose of imprisonment – is it actually reform, punishment or just misusing the system we are a part of?

Sujets

• police
• Vikas Yadav
• System
• Sanjeev Nanda
• Behind Bars
• Manu Sharma
• True Crime
• Amar Singh
• Arthur Road Jail
• Reform
• Prisoner
• Rule
• Punishment
• Theft
• Non-fiction
• Parole
• True Story
• Corruption
• Prison

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 19 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940845
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

BEHIND
BARS
 
OTHER LOTUS TITLES Ajit Bhattacharjea Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah: Tragic Hero of Kashmir Anil Dharker Icons: Men & Women Who Shaped Today s India Aitzaz Ahsan The Indus Saga: The Making of Pakistan Ajay Mansingh Firaq Gorakhpuri: The Poet of Pain & Ecstasy Alam Srinivas & TR Vivek IPL: The Inside Story Alam Srinivas Women of Vision: Nine Business Leaders in Conversation Amarinder Singh The Last Sunset: The Rise & Fall of the Lahore Durbar Bertil Falk Feroze: The Forgotten Gandhi Hamish Mcdonald Ambani & Sons Kingshuk Nag The Namo Story: A Political Life Kunal Purandare Ramakant Achrekar: A Biography Lucy Peck Delhi a Thousand Years of Building: An INTACH-Roli Guide Madan Gopal My Life and Times: Munshi Premchand M.J. Akbar Byline M.J. Akbar Blood Brothers: A Family Saga Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo Param Vir: Our Heroes in Battle Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo The Sinking of INS Khukri: What Happened in 1971 Madhu Trehan Tehelka as Metaphor Monisha Rajesh Around India in 80 Trains Noorul Hasan Meena Kumari: The Poet Peter Church Added Value: The Life Stories of Indian Business Leaders Peter Church Profiles in Enterprise: Inspiring Stories of Indian Business Leaders Rajika Bhandari The Raj on the Move: Story of the Dak Bungalow Ralph Russell The Famous Ghalib: The Sound of my Moving Pen R.V. Smith Delhi: Unknown Tales of a City Salman Akthar The Book of Emotions Sharmishta Gooptu Bengali Cinema: An Other Nation Shrabani Basu Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan S. Hussain Zaidi Dongri to Dubai Shantanu Guha Ray MAHI: The Story of India s Most Successful Captain Shrabani Basu Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan Sunil Raman & Rohit Aggarwal Delhi Durbar: 1911 The Complete Story Thomas Weber Going Native: Gandhi s Relationship with Western Women Thomas Weber Gandhi at First Sight Vir Sanghvi Men of Steel: India s Business Leaders in Candid Conversation FORTHCOMING TITLES Shahrayar Khan Bhopal Vignettes Aruna Roy The RTI Story: From Gramsabha to Loksabha
 
BEHIND
BARS
PRISON TALES OF
INDIA S MOST FAMOUS
SUNETRA CHOUDHURY

 
ROLI BOOKS
This digital edition published in 2017
First published in 2017 by The Lotus Collection An Imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash- II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 Email: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com
Copyright Sunetra Choudhury
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, print reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Roli Books. Any unauthorized distribution of this e-book may be considered a direct infringement of copyright and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
eISBN: 978-93-5194-084-5
All rights reserved. This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher s prior consent, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published.
 
for
Neel & Sudeep
 
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. The Four Days that Changed Amar Singh
2. The American Mallu who Survived Jail
3. The Tandoor Murderer
4. The Platinum Blonde who Wore LV in Jail
5. The Terrorist s Bride
6. The Raja who was Banished
7. The Hipster Juvenile who Went to Jail
8. The CEO in Jail
9. Wahid and the Different Shades of Torture
10. Somnath Bharti & the Attack of Don
11. The Gangrape of a Trans Bar Dancer in Custody
12. From Purnea Jail to Tihar
13. Waiting for Justice at 70
Appendix
Acknowledgements
 
INTRODUCTION
It was sometime in early 2016 that I got a call from an undisclosed number. The woman on the other end of the line had a foreign accent and when she told me her name was Anca, it took me only a couple of seconds to figure out who she was. I was a little confused because the last I heard about Anca Neascu Verma was that she was in jail for various CBI cases along with her husband, Abhishek. Oh, you are now..., I asked. Yes, I am now outside, she finished what I was trying to say, and I could sense her smiling. This sense of humour warmed me a bit, though I was intrigued because while I had reported on CBI and a few of cases that involved her and her husband, I had not shown any particular interest in cases which were more obsessively followed by defence beat reporters. I had never spoken to either of them but I was in touch with their lawyers for legal developments. So when she suggested we meet at Hyatt one afternoon, I thought it was perhaps some lead to a story, so I agreed. I wasn t really sure what I was going to gain from it but the fact that she sought me out soon after coming out of prison, had me curious.
I m feeling so good because I just went to the spa after so long, she declared when she saw me. She looked almost six feet tall and was striking with her blonde hair and a fitted designer dress. I tell people that I was away to the ashram. That s what I call my four years in jail - ashram. I was fascinated to say the least. I guessed she had called me to make a case for her husband who was still in jail at the time. I knew she wanted me to perhaps do stories on what had happened to CBI s investigation after so many years, but what we ended up talking about was her time in jail. I have done stories on jail experiences throughout my career, but never before had I got this kind of insight into prison life.
Anca was rich, beautiful, a Romanian married to an influential Indian businessman who was forever being chased by law authorities, and she was now sitting outside jail, literally cooling her pedicured heels and willing to dish the dirt on what goes on inside. Till now we only had an inkling of what may be happening inside through sporadic news headlines - Mohammad Shahabuddin being caught taking selfies with his phone inside prison, the Punjab jailbreaks revealing that they had been updating their Facebook status from inside the jail till the time they ran away, the Nirbhaya rapist committing suicide in jail. Each of these news breaks would quickly be hushed away by a spokesperson, like statement ordering an inquiry, and then everything would get brushed under the carpet again. For the first time, I was meeting a woman who had been in the slammer and was willing to talk about how she figured out the system to her advantage.
So I fixed a TV interview with Anca where she shocked audiences by revealing that well-off women inside jail, like her, hired servants for a fee. The servants, also inmates, would do all their menial tasks for meagre amounts of money, which meant that you could spend your jail term at least not worrying about cleaning the toilet and doing any other task assigned to you.
It would have ended with that - a good interview and a good TV show - but when she sent me a picture of herself wearing Louis Vuitton inside jail, it was beyond my imagination. She said that it wasn t for publication but there were a whole series of pictures taken like that which I couldn t get off my mind. The CBI may be calling her a con woman but Anca told me something which I found very honest: If you steal 1,000 rupees, the hawaldar will beat the shit out of you and lock you up in a dungeon with no bulb or ventilation. If you steal 55,000 crore then you get to stay in a 40-foot cell which has four split units, internet, fax, mobile phones and a staff of ten to clean your shoes and cook your food (in case it is not being delivered from Hyatt that particular day) - Incredible India!
None of these things she could say on camera but she was willing to give me all the information. How she managed to live with an LCD TV and Star World Premiere, not missing a single episode of Orange is the new Black inside jail. That s when the idea of a book occurred to me and I decided to look for others like Anca, who are basically so influential that they didn t mind telling us what really happens in our jails. If they hid their own comforts of how rules were bent for them, they didn t hesitate to talk about others and, in return, the others filled in on their jail antics.
Initially, getting people to talk was tough. For instance, in Dasna Jail, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar had clearly figured out a survival system. One of the first things that struck me during our meeting at the superintendent s room of the jail was how nicely ironed their kurtas were. They were both stunned with the prospect of spending their lives incarcerated for their teenage daughter Aarushi s murder, but they didn t have to worry about laundry, apparently. Neither of them had also lost any weight even though at that time, they had already spent more than a year at Dasna. This had always intrigued me. How could most affluent people manage to not look any different despite being in jail? Indrani Mukerjea was an exception in being the rich TV executive whose blow dried long bob soon became all-roots exposed grey mass, but people like A. Raja, Sanjay Dutt and others came out betraying no sign of change. The reason, in Talwar s case at least, was evident. They were doctors and the jail officials were delighted to have their services in house. So they had traded in their skill in servicing the jail staff and their families in return for a relatively comfortable life inside. But the problem was talking to me about it would only jeopardise their interests.
Then there was the case of Saharasri Subrata Roy. The Supreme Court may have sent him to prison in 2014 for not paying back his depositors 20,000 crore, but they had also given him benefits which had never been seen by anybody in prison before. Subrata Roy is the first person in the history of Tihar Jail to have comforts of air-conditioning. Whether you are A. Raja, Pappu Yadav, Manu Sharma or Sanjeev Nanda, the best you could have in luxury was a cooler, tiled floors and a cell to yourself which you could