Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi in Sabarmati Jail: 79 cases have been registered against him. The police have 10 cases to arrest him. 40 cases are pending in court. Lawrence Bishnoi has been out of jail for the past 14 months. Police in any Indian state will not be able to take him out of jail for questioning for the next 12 months.
In fact, India’s Home Ministry has provided security to notorious gangster Lawrence Bishnoi under a special legal provision that stipulates that Lawrence cannot be taken out of Sabarmati Jail in Gujarat until August 2025.
Lawrence Bishnoi is lodged in Sabarmati Central Jail.
There are 1,319 prisons in the country. If everyone focuses on one prison, it is this prison. It is said that this is a central jail among the total 16 jails in Gujarat. But this is the Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad, the address of Lawrence Bishnoi, a gangster who has become famous to the police and media in recent years. Currently, there are about 2,600 prisoners in the prison, and Lawrence Bishnoi is one of these 2,600 prisoners.
Lawrence has been in solitary confinement for 14 months.
Sabarmati Jail has two parts. A new prison and an old prison. Lawrence is currently being held in the old jail. There are ten rooms in a separate part of the old prison. 9 of them are empty. Lawrence has been living alone in Room 10 for the past 14 months. In the 14 months since Lawrence was taken to Sabarmati Prison, no outsider has seen him. During these 14 months, his family did not come to see him, nor did he allow any outsiders to see him. He himself did not come out of prison to appear in other courts. More importantly, during these 14 months, he was never able to meet face to face with his lawyer.
However, some meetings did take place during this period. There have also been some discussions with lawyers about the case. But it all happens via video conferencing. In other words, for the past 14 months since coming to Sabarmati Prison, Lawrence has been alone except for some special staff in the prison.
Drugs worth Rs 2 billion seized from Pakistani ship
The time is approximately early 2023. Later, Lawrence Sidhu was imprisoned in Bathinda jail in Punjab for the Musewala murder case. Here, Lawrence is lodged in Bathinda jail, while on the other hand, the ATS, or Anti-Terrorism Squad, of Gujarat is investigating a drug case and a drug cartel case. In fact, on September 14, 2022, a joint operation between the Gujarat ATS and the Indian Coast Guard captured a Pakistani ship near the port in the Kutch region. Heroin worth approximately Rs 2 billion was recovered from the Pakistani ship named Al-Tayyasa.
Lawrence has been lodged in Sabarmati Jail since August 24, 2023.
During the investigation of the case, it was discovered that Lawrence Bishnoi was connected to this batch of drugs in India. Since the seriousness of the case required Lawrence to be interrogated, the Gujarat ATS filed an application with the Patiala House Court in Delhi to detain Lawrence for interrogation. Once the application is approved, it will be transferred from Bathinda to Nalia Court, Gujarat on August 24, 2023. Later, the court sent him to judicial custody in Sabarmati jail. Lawrence Bishnoi has been detained in this prison from August 24, 2023 to the present.
Although the Gujarat ATS brought him from Delhi to Gujarat for interrogation, police from any state could not bring Lawrence out of Sabarmati jail and interrogate him despite arrest warrants registered in ten different cases in different states. with me.
79 cases have been registered against the gangster
A total of 79 cases have been registered against Lawrence in five states. Most of such cases like extortion, threats, attempt to kill, murder, kidnapping, etc. have been registered. Of the 79 cases, 40 are still pending in courts in different states of the country. Trials are still waiting to begin as no arrests have been made in ten cases. There were nine such cases in which Lawrence was acquitted by different courts. He has been sentenced in two cases. The remainder of the 79 cases are awaiting commencement.
By the way, for your information, let us tell you that as of now, i.e. as of October 23, the Mumbai Police has not registered any case directly in the name of Lawrence Bishnoi in the Baba Siddiqui murder case. If the matter is registered in future, Lawrence Bishnoi will face 80 cases against him.
The laws of the country are one, why are Lawrence’s laws different?
Now the question is when the laws of the country are the same, the punishment for the crime is the same and the working mode of the courts is the same then when can the Gujarat ATS take Lawrence Bishnoi out of Bathinda in a drug case to Ahmedabad, then the rest why couldn’t the state police take him out of Sabarmati Jail and take him to their states for transit remand in their respective cases? If the rationale is that Sabarmati is a maximum security prison from where Lawrence cannot contact his gang via mobile phone, then that rationale is also absurd.
Lawrence holds video call with Pakistani drug cartel
You will remember a piece of audio. The voice among them is Atiq Ahmed. Atiq Ahmed is also being held in the same Sabarmati prison where Lawrence is currently incarcerated. Here he manages his gang over the phone. If we talk only about video calls, it was revealed in June this year. Lawrence Bishnoi sits in Sabarmati jail talking to a Pakistani drug cartel. Wish him a happy Eid al-Fitr. These two signs are enough to show how high the security level is in Sabarmati Prison.
Section 267 of the CRPC provides for the method of appearance and trial.
So the question is, why has Lawrence not come out of Sabarmati jail in the past 14 months? Or get fired? So this also has a story. Article 267 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, stipulates when, how and why a criminal must appear in court during a trial. According to our country’s judicial procedures, the police arrest the defendants and then take them to court. Now, courts decide the guilt or innocence of people caught by the police based on witnesses and evidence.
CRPC explains the procedure to criminals
This means that any criminal offense will be decided within the jurisdiction of the courts. Under Section 267 of the Criminal Procedure Code, our law gives the police the right to produce criminals before the courts. If the offender comes from another state and commits the crime elsewhere, then this section gives the police the power to bring the offender back to the state where he or she is for questioning or to remand in transit for trial through the courts of that state. Take it away. That is, if Lawrence Bishnoi commits any crime in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan or Mumbai, then the police of all these states will have to take him to their respective locations for questioning or Prosecution.
Section 268 of CrPC has become a safety net for Lawrence.
So why, despite so many cases, has Lawrence Bishnoi not come out of Sabarmati jail in the past 14 months? Why didn’t police from other states take him to their states for interrogation or trial? Therefore, just as Section 267 of the Criminal Procedure Code allows criminals to be remanded in transit, interrogated in police custody or appear in court, on the contrary, Section 268 of the Criminal Procedure Code cuts off all these rights and the Criminal Procedure Code itself Section 268 is Lawrence Bishnoi’s biggest safety cover right now. However, in the new IPC and CrPC, the name and number of this section have changed. But the rights are the same. The question now is, why are the security guarantees of Section 268 only for Lawrence? Why was this part forced upon Lawrence?
Three reasons for implementing Article 268
In fact, under the new law, Section 268 of the CrPC has now been converted into Section 303 of the Indian Civil Security Act (BNSS). The law provides that this provision can be imposed on any criminal only in three circumstances. First, a convict is sent to jail for a crime and secondly, if the offender is taken out of the jail under any circumstances or any other circumstances, then it may pose a threat to law and order or his own life may be in danger s. 3. Public interest. You might also call it media experimentation. It was the case of the criminal who often made headlines.
This is how the Home Ministry implements Section 268 of the CrPC
Therefore, due to these three reasons under this section, Lawrence Bishnoi has been lodged in Sabarmati jail for the past 14 months. After Lawrence Bishnoi reached Sabarmati Jail from Bathinda Jail on August 24, 2023, the Home Ministry rushed to impose the then CrPC Section 268 on Lawrence Bishnoi. provisions. Then a year passed like this. Just two months ago, at the end of August this year, the Home Office extended the same clause barring Lawrence from prison until August 2025. That is, until next August, no agency in India, no state police, can call or take him to their state and interrogate him for any crime committed by Lawrence or his gang. Nor can any court revoke his transit remand.
Lawrence will continue to serve in Sabarmati jail until August 2025
So the question is, how will the Lawrence 79 case be resolved? Or how will police from those states who need to question Lawrence in separate cases interrogate him? Therefore, this section provides that if Lawrence has to be interrogated in connection with any case involving the state, then the police of the state must obtain permission from the court to come to Sabarmati Jail where Lawrence has to be interrogated. During this period, if any case is pending against Lawrence in any court and Lawrence has to appear before the court, then in such a case, he will participate in the case through video conferencing from Sabarmati Jail. This means that, no matter what, Lawrence’s permanent address will be Sabarmati Prison until at least August 2025.
(Comments from Manisha Jha)
