Swati Sathe, DIG Prisons and the senior IPS officer who is currently in the dock for trying to garner help for the six policewomen arrested for the death of inmate Manjula Shetye at Byculla prison last month, seems to have a history of high-handedness and custodial torture. Two former inmates speak of alleged brutality, corruption and privileged lives of notorious gangsters under her reign, when she was the Prison Incharge at Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail. In one of the cases, the Bombay high court too took cognisance of inmates’ complaints against Sathe in 2009, and ordered a departmental probe against her.
School teacher Wahid Shaikh, now 38-years-old, was picked up by the Maharashtra police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) in 2006 on suspicion of involvement in the 7/11 train blasts of Mumbai, which claimed 209 lives that year. Although acquitted of the charges now, Shaikh, who looks visibly older than his years, still shudders at the thought of his three-year stint at Arthur Road jail. The primary school teacher, while speaking to The Quint, stated that his gross physical and mental torture started the moment he stepped foot in the central prison, where he was welcomed by five officers, mercilessly beaten even before he was shown to his barrack. Sathe, at the time, was the jail’s superintendent.
She was very close to ATS officers, and would let them into prison without the requisite permissions. At any abrupt hour, she would summon us (accused in the blasts), and along with the ATS officers, she would pressurise us to turn approvers in the case. Sathe would tell us that in exchange for speaking against our co-accused, we would be given Rs 25 lakh each, marriage to a Bollywood starlet, a set business, and a clean chit in the case within three months. ‘I am the queen here,’ she would say when we resisted, ‘Meri baat manoge toh life ban jayegi, warna yahaan se tumhari laash hi jayegi.’ (If you listen to me your life will be made, else only your dead body will leave this place)Wahid Shaikh
Shaikh stated that after several attempts at bringing these threats to the court’s notice, the judge asked him to file an application before the court.
He says that when he wrote the application in the courtroom, there was no jail staff around him, and yet, the moment he entered Arthur Road jail, he was confronted by Sathe and her subordinates, armed with sticks.
Shaikh threatened that if he were beaten, he would complain against her to the court again, and this mindless courage, he says, saved him from many a beating thereafter.
For two years until mid-2008, her pressure tactics continued. I was lodged in the anda cell, which can accommodate only one person. But she crammed four others with me. She would threaten that she would kill me if I did not retract my complaints against her. But I decided not to let fear take over. I would keep filing RTI applications about the medical, overcrowding and other issues at Arthur Road jail, kept demanding copies of the jail manual, and she would continue being irked with me. She even took me off the anda cell and put me in a general barrack with hundreds of other prisoners. And then, in June, 2008, after her ire peaked, her threats started taking a physical form.Wahid Shaikh
Shaikh stated that on June 28, 2008, around 40 prisoners, including him, were taken out of their barracks and escorted to the open space inside the prison after which prison staff used sticks and belts to beat the men up.
Recollecting the day, he said that all he could hear was pleadings of the inmates, who were running all over the maidan to escape the officers. Several inmates, he said, had broken limbs, sustained fractures, but continued to run, their clothes covered in blood.
He stated that medical help was not provided to the inmates for twenty days after the assault. Several inmates were detected with fractures, contusions and grievous injuries during the subsequent examination – a fact recorded in a judgement announced by the Bombay high court in the matter.
After this incident, several writ petitions were filed against the Arthur Road jail staff and state prison authorities, particularly Sathe, by Shaikh, other inmates and their families. A judicial inquiry confirmed that excessive force was used against some of the prison inmates, and then a year later, the Bombay high court ordered a departmental inquiry against Sathe and her colleagues, stating that criminal action could also be initiated against the officers if need be.
In its 33-page judgement dated July 21, 2009, the bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice AR Joshi observed, “We have no doubt in our mind that the force was used disproportionately and also for the reasons extraneous. Before coming to the legal submissions made, we may hold that the Jail Superintendent (Sathe) and the supporting staff used the force excessively and for the reasons extraneous and not for the reasons to maintain discipline in the jail. It has to be remembered that the convicts or the under trials are human being and they have to be treated like human beings.”
While Shaikh spoke of force and torture, another former inmate from Arthur Road, Pradip Bhalekar, who has been campaigning for prisoners’ rights and has also filed a petition challenging the early release of actor Sanjay Dutt, spoke about the privileged lives enjoyed by notorious gangsters at Arthur Road under Sathe’s reign. He stated that when she was the superintendent at the prison, gangsters Mustafa Dossa, Iqbal Kaskar and DK Rao had easy access to mobile phones in prison, and their cells were never subjected to checks, as opposed to other prisoners.
I had called for a hunger strike about the various malpractices in prison, and several inmates were in support. The strike went on for months, and was also reported in the press. This really angered Sathe, and she would send other inmates to beat me up. Once she brought a mattress to my cell. She wanted to pin me down on it, and forcibly feed me to break my fast. She, along with other staff, then forced a pipe down my throat, and tried to administer milk.Pradip Bhalekar
Bhalekar spent over four years in prison after being booked under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).
Sathe, when approached for her version, was not available for comment despite calls and text messages.
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