BENGALURU: City police arrested a warder with Bengaluru Central Prison on charges of attempting to smuggle cigarettes and a saturated absorbent paper — suspected to be used for packing drugs — into the barracks Friday night.
A prison warder (or Prison officer/guard) is a law enforcement professional responsible for the custody, supervision, safety, and discipline of inmates within a correctional facility. The arrested warder is Rahul Patil, who worked as a warder in different prisons since 2018. He was transferred to Bengaluru Central Prison from Belagavi this June.
Police said Patil came to his night shift around 6.50pm, and during the frisking by Karnataka State Industrial Security Force personnel at the entrance, the banned substances were found in his undergarment. Two packs of cigarettes (10 each in a pack) and 60 grams of saturated absorbent paper were found.
"Immediately, the matter was brought to the notice of the senior prison officials, and a case against Patil was registered at Parappana Agrahara police station. He was arrested immediately," a senior police officer said.
For a week, prison officials strictly banned the sale of cigarettes and beedis, which were earlier sold at the prison canteen. Though the prison manual prohibits their sales, prison officials, on humanitarian grounds, were selling them to inmates. A group of inmates protested against the ban, demanding the resumption of sales.
Patil is the second warder to be caught smuggling banned substances into the prison in three months. In Oct, warder Amar Praje was allegedly caught while trying to enter the prison with a mobile phone by hoodwinking the security personnel. Based on suspicion, he was stopped and frisked, revealing a mobile phone concealed in his undergarment.
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