NEW DELHI: A 30-year-old "dreaded gangster", an associate of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, was stabbed to death at the high-security Tihar prison here in the national capital on Friday, officials said.
The deceased, identified as Prince Tewatia, was previously involved in 16 cases including, murder, attempt to murder and a recent sensational case of carjacking in southwest Delhi. It is yet unclear which rival gang was responsible for his death.
A senior Tihar Jail official while speaking to the New Indian Express said that Tewatia was lodged at Jail No 3 of the Tihar prison.
"Around 5.30 pm today, inmate Tewatia, outside his ward inside Jail no 3 attacked a fellow inmate named Attatur Rehman. Soon more prisoners from different groups joined and during the ensuing scuffle, Tewatia was stabbed multiple times by an improvised weapon (a sharp metal object like knife or poker which prisoners usually make by themselves)," the official told The New Indian Express.
Tewatia in the ensuing scuffle received fatal injuries and he was immediately taken to central hospital inside Jail No 3 from where he was referred to Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital, however, he succumbed midway and was brought dead at the hospital.
Apart from Tewatia, three more people were injured in the brawl. "Their condition is said to be stable," the official said.
Another official informed that an FIR under relevant sections of the IPC has been registered in the matter. "The incident will also be investigated by a senior judicial officer," he said.
Sharing the brief criminal history of deceased Tewatia, the official said that he used to extort protection money from Satta Operators, Builders in Southern parts of Delhi. He used to fire upon his target if someone refused to give him protection money.
Tewatia was first time arrested in 2010 for murder. While fighting his case in Court, he produced a fake birth certificate so that he could be treated as a juvenile but was caught and a forgery case was registered against him on the Court orders. Two years later, Tewatia joined Rohit Chaudhary's gang and started working for him.
Notably, the incident brought memories of Tihar inmate Ankit Gujjar murder case of 2021. On August 4, Gujjar was found dead inside his cell in Tihar jail while two of his former cellmates, who were lodged in an adjacent lockup, were found injured. The Delhi High Court had observed that the nature of injuries sustained by inmate Gujjar clearly show that it was a case of custodial violence. The initial police investigation had found that security personnel allegedly assaulted Gujjar after the gangster slapped a deputy superintendent.
Just two months back in January, this year, a Delhi Court, while denying bail to the accused jail warden in Ankit Gujjar death case, said that Gujjar was a suspected gangster and there was no ground to deny him medical aid. Special Judge Amit Kumar had said there were eyewitnesses, who had seen the warden and others brutally assaulting Gujjar and thereafter no medical aid was provided to the deceased, who died in the intervening night of August 3 and 4 after a brutal assault around 7.30 pm which lasted for half an hour.