LUCKNOW: In a series of raids in jails across the state, senior officials of UP police and district administration conducted an extensive raid in Deoria district jail on Thursday morning recovering a mobile phone, four sim cards, four pen drives and a knife from the barrack of muscleman and Allahabad gangster Atiq Ahmad who was lodged there.
After the recovery of gadgets, Deoria district magistrate ordered the police authorities to register a case against the gangster. The brutal murder of mafia don Munna Bajrangi in Baghpat jail by gangster Sunil Rathi lodge in the same prison on July 9, had sent the Uttar Pradesh police authorities and home department into a tizzy.
Steps were taken to refurbish security in and around the jail premises, orders were issued to district administrations to raid respective prisons across the state to finetune the jail administration and break the criminal-jail officials' nexus.
A team of around 300 police personnel led by DM Sujit Kumar and SP Rohan P Kanai commenced the raids on early Thursday morning. The team also comprised of all the sub-divisional magistrates (SDMs) of the district and Station House Officers (SHOs) of 10 police stations along with Circle Officers. Each officer was entrusted with the responsibility of one barrack.
The devices recovered from Atiq's barrack were handed over to cyber crime cell to retrieve the date for its analysis. The raiding team also recovered a number of knives, mobile phones, sims of different telecom service providers from other barracks.
The inmates, as well as the jail officials, were caught unawares due to sudden raid on jail premises. To keep the inmates under control, a huge force was deployed on premises. This was being seen as one of the biggest raids conducted in the last one decade. In the previous raid conducted two months ago, the police team had recovered 43 mobile phones from the same jail premises.
The raids are being conducted in the jails across the state to put a leash on illegal activities of the gangsters who run their extortion and other rackets conveniently sitting in the jails. As per the sources, a few months ago, a history-sheeter lodged in Deoria district jail had made an extortion call while on a visit to a hospital to a doctor of Gorakhpur.
Even another prisoner had called up a gram pradhan of Sultanpur from inside the jail asking for money. Pradhan had approached the DM who wrote to his Deoria counterpart creating a flutter in district administration. Taking a serious note of the incidents and also on the basis of the report of police intelligence units, the district administration was directed by the higher authorities in Lucknow to raid Deoria jail.