Mateen Hafeez TNN
Mumbai: The state jail authorities are in no mood to court trouble any more even if that means estradited gangster Abu Salem might be miffed.
In order to avoid any kind of ruckus inside the prison, policemen at the Taloja jail returned a 1-kg cake brought to “celebrate Salem’s 41st birthday” on October 2. Salem was shifted from Arthur Road jail to Taloja in July after he was assaulted by Dgang member Mustafa Dossa.
The reason that jail officials offered for their refusal to allow the cake inside was that October 2, being the birth anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri, the jail authorities did not want to take any risk lest their act of granting permission to celebrate a gnagster’s birthday be seen as “politically incorrect or insensitive”.
A source said the refusal could also because of a previous similar incident when liquor bottles and a six-kg cake was ordered by the inmates of Arthur Road jail on January 13 apparently to celebrate underworld don Chhota Rajan’s birthday. The prisoners knew that they would not be allowed to get a cake for Rajan; so, what they did was several of them approached the jail authorities, saying they wanted to celebrate their own birthdays and needed cakes. “The jail officials were surprised that so many inmates wanted to celebrate their birthdays on the same day,’’ said an officer. “When officials found out that January 13 was actually Rajan’s birthday, they refused to order the cakes and returned the inmates’ money.”
“There would have been hell to pay had something similar occurred on the birth anniversary of Gandhiji and Shastriji,” a Taloja official said.
Though Salem does not have a home in Mumbai, the court has allowed him to have home-cooked food. Every day, he gets his meal in a tiffin box brought from outside. “On October 2, the boys who get him his meal brought a cake, saying it was Salem’s birthday and that he had ordered it. However, after making enquiries, the jail authorities refused to send the cake inside the prison,” said a policeman attached to the jail. Incidentally, two police constables at the Arthur Road jail were suspended on October 2 allegedly for negligence in preventing a fight between inmates there.
The Times of India, October 5, 2010
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