New Delhi: Two Kashmiri prisoners were beaten up and injured in a fight between members of two groups lodged in the highly-secured Tihar jail here.
The Octember 13 brawl over some “trivial issue” in the overcrowded prison has raised safety concerns for Kashmiris in the jail that also houses separatist leaders, arrested in a funding case.
DIG Prisons S.S. Parihar said there was a “fight between members of two groups in Jail No.3 and that two Kashmiri prisoners were beaten up”, though they were not part of the warring groups.
“It was a trivial issue and a police complaint has been filed,” Parihar said
The two Kashmiri prisoners were identified as Mohammed Shafi and Javaid Ahmed. The incident has raised concerns over the safety of other Kashmiri prisoners, including eight separatist leaders arrested on charges of receiving funds for inciting trouble in Jammu and Kashmir.
The separatist leaders, including Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son-in-law Altaf Shah, are lodged in the high-risk prison, Jail No.4
But Parihar denied that there were safety concerns for the Kashmiri inmates in the prison. “There have been incidents of fighting between inmates in the past. We cannot say that Kashmiris were specifically targeted.”
Fights between inmates in the over-populated Tihar Jail are common and some of them have turned deadly in the past.
At least 17 prisoners were injured in March this year when a clash broke out between two groups.
Last year, an inmate was killed in a fight between two groups in a moving jail van entering the Tihar Jail from Saket court.
In a similar incident in 2015, two inmates were allegedly beaten to death by seven others in a fight that broke out inside a prison van heading from Rohini court to Tihar jail.
Tihar Jail, located in north Delhi, houses nearly 15,000 inmates against the capacity for a little over 8,300.
