The leaders of Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das, arrested for allegedly entering the now-denotified Jantar Mantar protest site without permission earlier this week, have been lodged in separate high-security wards in Delhi’s Tihar Jail, The Indian Express has reported.
According to the report, the administration has deployed additional personnel outside their cells and directed that they may not be released with other jail inmates during day time.
The Delhi Police said the two were arrested on October 14 for allegedly making repeated attempts to disturb public peace and violate the law. They were sent to five days of judicial custody in Tihar Jail for repeated violations of law and serious apprehension that, if released on bail, they would again violate the law and instigate others, said police.
Ranka is inmate number 1784 and Das is inmate number 3752, according to jail records. The two were initially lodged in jail number 2, but Ranka was later shifted to jail number 4.
Das is lodged in ward number 3 of jail number 2, while Ranka is lodged in ward number 15 of jail number 4.
The blocks, where they have been kept, are less crowded than the others in the complex.
The wards are separate. No prisoner from the other wards is allowed to enter. CCTV cameras have been installed in their cells to monitor all activity, and they remain on suicide watch round-the -lock,” a source in Tihar Jail said.
On Thursday, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and CJP’s legal head Ratna Singh visited them.
Das is lodged in jail number 2, where former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was earlier lodged and where activist and former JNU student Umar Khalid is currently lodged, though in a different high-risk cell.
Ranka is in jail no. 4, earlier used by the jail authorities for Vipassana meditation programmes and where arms dealer Abhishek Verma was previously lodged, a source said.
While neither of them has made any special request, one of them has verbally asked the jail administration to meet one of the jail inmates, and the request was turned down, a source said.
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