Black Warrant

BLACK WARRANT

📌Sunetra Choudhury (currently the political editor at Hindustan Times) along with Sunil Gupta who has spent more than 3 decades in Tihar Jail as an officer of law, gives us a bitter glimpse of the heart wrenching reality behind Asia's largest prison.

📚The first chapter starts with Gupta's family being disappointed in his judgement of choosing a job at Tihar. As the story progresses, he meets Charles Sobhraj, the ''super IG" of the jail. Sitting there he witnessed prisoners being beaten in the chakkar as there were no surveillance cameras.

There were no trained staffs. Instead Gupta learnt his job from two inmates. In return these inmates devised a system of disappearing the warrants of small time criminals in exchange of a small fee. Sobhraj was never locked up in a cell, no deadline for a lock-in or out, had complete liberty, dealt with his business of narcotics and liquor within the premises, had C class prisoners to cook, massage, wash his clothes and treated the officers as his peers. In short, life at Tihar was enjoyable for him.

He could afford to pay the jail staffs like none other. His drafted petitions, building cases were more effective than that of an actual lawyer. Later the Ministry of Home Affairs suspended six people after finding out the lapse in their administration.

📚 The chapter follows with some hilarious breakout incidents along with the famous breakout of Sobhraj by drugging the officers on his birthday. The story recounts the tales of a jailor's loneliness, the monstrous rape of Geeta Chopra and the murder of Sanjay Chopra. After the issuing of Black Warrant against their names, it discusses about the emotional plight of the jailor, only Maharashtra allowing families to witness their death, non availability of proper hangman and so on.

📚 The story continues by giving a descriptive account of the men killing Indira Gandhi, custodial death, etc.
The night before the hanging of Afzal Guru was disastrous as the rope malfunctioned. The tale of telling him about his hanging only some hours before. He sang a song from the movie Badal and later entered the Phansi Kothi. Maqbool Butt and him was buried near each other in the jail.

📚 The chapters continue to give a narration of Anna Hazare's fight against corruption, jail fetishes, loneliness of the jail world, high crimes and a broken system

Rating- ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Authors- Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury
Price- INR 395
Pages- 178

#