Mandoli Prison in Delhi, which houses more than 3,000 prisoners, works without a cell phone jammer as the prison administration is still waiting for 4G jammer. Mandoli prison officials, which opened for prisoners in 2020 to relieve the Tihar prison in Delhi, confirmed that they do not yet need to install a single jammer.
The device is designed to block signals sent by cell phones and make it impossible for prisoners to use phones within the prison complex even if they manage to get the phone inside.
Prisoners are prohibited from carrying or using cell phones in Indian prisons.
The prisoners at Mandoli take advantage of the absence of jammers to break free. They make blackmail calls, file complaints or make videos and share them with their contacts in the city – in undisguised 4G glory.
In the past two months, Delhi police said they had blown up two racketeers operated by prisoners in the Mandoli prison complex.
On Thursday last week, three prisoners were reportedly arrested (in this case, officially from prison) for demanding 50,000 rupees from a man in Geeta Colony.
Two days earlier, the city police’s special cell (anti-terrorist unit) had alleged that they had averted murders by arresting two men who had been ordered to kill two men by a gangster detained in Mandoli. The police then announced that they had intercepted calls from Chanderbhan (aka Aman Yadav), who was being held in Mandoli Prison, to his staff – Balkishan and Mohammed Ateek – to eliminate two men who did not give him protection money.
A senior Home Office official said 4G jammers, recently approved by the government, were not available sooner. “We have moved to install them and the preliminary work is ongoing. Permitting jammers to use and installing the latest technology will take some time. Once installed, the devices will be the best and will render all cell phones in jail unusable.”
Fifteen days ago, the video of a gangster from western Uttar Pradesh showing the man recording a video on his cell phone while cooking in a mandoli prison cell had gone viral on social media.
Prison officials said that although the new prison was equipped with a jammer, the prison director general had instructed the prison general to carry out strict controls every day.
“Senior officials have instructed us to run strict security checks and warned us of action if phones are smuggled in. The few cases where prisoners used cell phones have been ordered to investigate. We have been warned that there will be strict measures to be taken nothing like this will happen in the future. “