Behind Bars in Byculla

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by Jigna Vora


  I ignored all their questions. They were more like accusations. Most of them talked to me and looked at me with the certainty that I was a murderer. Some were unsure if I had committed the crime. But I stuck to my lawyer’s advice that I should not indulge in unnecessary conversations. He had warned me that cops and crooks both have informers inside the jail.

  Barrack No. 2 in Circle 1, where I was placed, was reserved for old women, or those with kids or severe medical conditions. After the morning headcount, I wondered if I would be able to take a bath. I asked a thin woman in her fifties, Samaira Bibi, who had slept next to me, about the bathing area. She pointed to the same dingy toilet I had used the previous night.

  ‘Can I get some hot water?’ I asked.

  ‘Half a bucket of warm water is allowed for the kids,’ she said. ‘Adults don’t get it easily.’

  Another inmate told me that a bucket of hot water was reserved only for the big sharks.

  I queued up outside the toilet, waiting for my turn. Other inmates tied their dupattas above the doors of the toilets to cover the upper half of their bodies. In that reeking toilet, I followed the other inmates and knotted my dupatta over the two rusty nails on the walls before bathing.

  After bathing, some of the inmates settled down to read the newspaper. Marathi newspapers were provided in all the barracks. Most inmates had read about my case over the past ten days. They continued to prod me in the hope of learning more details. Suddenly, from amidst the chaos around me, Paromita Chakraborty, the tilak-wearing woman who had offered me chips, pulled me away. It seemed like she was trying to protect me.

  I couldn’t help but ask her, ‘Why is everybody so eager to speak with me?’

  ‘You’re all over the papers,’ Paromita said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘They think you’re influential. Being close to a powerful inmate like you can earn them some leniency from the cops.’

  We were interrupted by the call for breakfast. One of the inmates, Usha Maa, was the warden of the barracks and wore a yellow sari as a mark of identification. She was serving a life sentence for scheming with her lover to murder her husband. She was in charge of distributing food to the inmates and acted as an intermediary between the undertrial inmates and the cops. Everyone queued up for breakfast. The food was distributed with strict rationing. I was about to line up too, but Paromita stopped me. Tania, a young Bangladeshi undertrial who did odd jobs for Paromita, got a plateful of the poha and a mug of tea for her, and me. I picked the rice flakes with my hands, but they were coarse and dry. The tea was thin, more water than milk. Tasteless, but I somehow managed to gulp it down without throwing up. I saw a lot of food being wasted.

  ‘Who cooks here?’ I asked Paromita.

  ‘The men cook the food,’ she said. ‘Women are not allowed inside the kitchen. The jail authorities say women steal a lot of food items for personal consumption.’

  A young girl, about two years of age, playfully tugged at my rust-coloured kurta. I ruffled her curly hair. Her mother came around and introduced herself as Nazia. She had been accused in a kidnapping case and had been in jail for the past four months. I also learnt that Samaira Bibi had been jailed for abetting her daughter-in-law’s suicide. Her husband and son had also been imprisoned at the Arthur Road Jail in the same case, but her husband had died of medical complications in the prison itself. The authorities informed Samaira Bibi only three days after the death had occurred, by dragging her to the morgue. She appeared to be a religious woman who always had a prayer on her lips.

  Paromita asked if I was aware that Chhota Rajan’s wife Sujata Nikhalje had also been lodged in the same jail. I didn’t know what to say. As a reporter, I had worked on many stories about Sujata’s arrest in an extortion case. She had led a hunger strike inside the jail to highlight the bad conditions. I had written a story about the strike too. It felt strange, a twist of fate, that long after Sujata had been released, I had landed up in the same jail.

  Lunch was served early at 10.30 a.m., brought in the same huge aluminium containers. Tania brought me a plate filled with rotis, rice, dal and brinjal curry. I picked a roti between my fingers, and it was at least five times thicker than the thin chapatis I was used to eating from my Gujarati grandmother’s kitchen. I could see worms inside the brinjal, and so I only ate a few morsels of rice. Later, I washed my plate in the toilet and was on the way back to my barrack when a woman in her twenties, holding an infant in her arms, called out to me. Her baby boy’s stomach was bloated and the boy would just not stop crying.

  ‘Didi?’ she asked. ‘Did you eat?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Do you need anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Let me know if I can help in any way,’ she said.

  I nodded and walked away. Samaira Bibi told me that the woman’s name was Sangeeta. She was a ragpicker and had been jailed for some petty crime.

  ‘Don’t speak to that woman,’ Samaira Bibi said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She is sick. Diseased.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  Samaira Bibi spoke after a long pause, uttering the word with much caution: ‘AIDS.’

  I felt sorry for Sangeeta. Other inmates would not even talk to her for the fear of contracting the virus. Even though I was away from Sangeeta, I could still hear her baby crying.

  There was a bandi in the barracks from 12 noon to 3 p.m. Some inmates slept, while some watched Doordarshan on the small television that was mounted on the wall. Inmates discussed their love for serials like Ramayan and Mahabharat. The mothers breastfed their infants. The inmates stuck to their groups. Pickpockets had their own group, same as the robbers.

  Much like life outside, social divisions inside Byculla Jail arose out of occupation. On the boards outside, the jail declared itself as a ‘rehabilitation centre’, but each group was holed up in a corner, recruiting more personnel in their gangs and marking their territories for future operations. More than rehabilitation, the centre seemed to offer an opportunity for the criminals to grow their existing groups.

  Around 1.30 p.m., a lady constable called out my name.

  ‘Someone is here to meet you,’ she said. ‘In the mulaqaat room.’

  ‘How do I go there?’

  ‘Follow me,’ she said.

  I stood up hurriedly and followed her to the judicial area. I wondered who my visitor would be and I hoped that he or she had come with some good news.

  On the way, the jailer, Pushpa Kadam, happened to notice me and cast a long look at my attire.

  ‘Stop!’ she said.

  I froze.

  She turned to the constable. ‘Why is Jigna not wearing a dupatta?’

  ‘Sorry, madam,’ the constable said.

  ‘Ensure it never happens again,’ Pushpa said before walking away.

  The constable chided me for not knowing the rules I had never been told about. A dupatta was compulsory for every inmate leaving the barracks. She warned that I would not be allowed to meet my visitors if I did not wear a dupatta. I promised to keep it handy in the future. Then, she let me into the mulaqaat room where I was surprised to find my estranged father waiting for me. The scent of alcohol was evident on his breath.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I asked.

  ‘To meet you,’ he said. ‘I was worried.’

  ‘You found the time to meet me after two weeks?’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You won’t be getting out anytime soon.’

  ‘What?’ I shouted. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I meant, I have no money really.’

  ‘So, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Give me some money. I can come to visit you every day.’ He paused. ‘You are my daughter. You’ll give me the money, right?’

  I choked as if a stone had been forced down my throat. ‘I don’t have any money.’

  I could not stand the sight of his face for a minute longer. I stormed out of the
room and rushed back to my barrack. My father’s alcoholism had destroyed my childhood and my family. The man who once drove a Mercedes Benz in Dubai had never cared to save a dime for his family. His lifestyle and alcohol had taken all his glory away. And at a time when I needed a few words of comfort, there he was, unashamedly asking for money. I shuddered with anger. Tears rolled down my eyes as I sat in the corner of the barrack. My father had always cared about his bottle, but never his daughter.

  3

  SPIDER WOMAN

  One morning, there was a huge commotion. A dark, short woman, clad in white shorts and a T-shirt, had climbed up several feet along the walls of the barracks with the help of the pipes. A lack of judgement or a slight slip in balance would mean she would fall to her death. But it seemed like Sapna Pereira had the dexterity of a trapeze artist. She continued to scale higher while we craned our necks to see what exactly she was up to. A repeat offender at the Byculla Jail, Sapna was a pickpocket from Mumbai’s Juhu area. Her climbing stunts too were not new. This is why some of the old-timers in the barracks turned a blind eye towards Sapna’s antics. Some of the concerned inmates rushed to alert the warden Usha Maa and other jail authorities.

  ‘Sapna!’ she called out. ‘Come down!’

  ‘No!’ Sapna shouted from atop. ‘No way!’

  ‘Why?’ Usha Maa said. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because these behenchod cops don’t take me to court.’

  Sapna had been angry with the policemen. On several occasions when her case could have come up for hearing, the cops did not take her along. The court dates were a chance to step out of the stuffy barracks and breathe some fresh air. Each one of us in the jail awaited them. But the cops from the local arms unit of the Mumbai Police who were entrusted with the responsibility of accompanying the inmates from jail to court and back were least bothered. Working in the local arms unit was nothing but a punishment posting for these police officials. Seething in their own frustration, the cops were least interested in coordinating with jail authorities for court dates. This left many like Sapna angered. But her way of venting was different from others.

  ‘Sapna,’ Usha Maa shouted again. ‘You’ll hurt yourself. Please come down.’

  ‘These police-wallahs never show up for my court visit,’ Sapna said. ‘They do it on purpose.’

  ‘No, Sapna. It is not like that!’

  ‘These fuckers don’t want me to get bail!’ Sapna screamed. ‘They want me to rot in here for ever!’

  She climbed higher and reached a ledge and balanced herself. There was just enough space for one person to stand, but she seemed at home. And then, the unimaginable happened. She slid her shorts down her legs, and took off her T-shirt. She stood up there, completely naked. More cops arrived on the scene, including Constable Waseema Shaikh, who had been a part of the strip search conducted on me. The cops were angry, but they kept pleading with Sapna to climb down. Sapna hurled abuses at them. Only when the cops assured her that they would take all steps to ensure her next court visit would not be missed, Sapna decided that it was time for her to give up. She came down the pipes, as easily as she had made her way up. The reconciliatory tone of the cops vanished as soon as she landed on the ground, but they did not take any further action because it was close to noon, and about time for the bandi. The flushing red look on the faces of the cops conveyed that, soon enough, they would teach Sapna a lesson she would not forget.

  That afternoon, Sapna came up to me in the barracks and introduced herself. She was still wearing the same white shorts and T-shirt. I noticed that she had very short hair and a flat nose. As we sat with our backs against the walls, she spoke in typical Mumbaiya slang.

  ‘Oye, item, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You will get out of jail soon.’

  I nodded. A constable was standing at a distance, and she happened to look our way. The cops always kept a tab on what went on inside the barracks. It was essential to controlling the place.

  ‘Never fear these motherfuckers,’ Sapna said and pointed her eyes in the constable’s direction. ‘They can’t do nothing to us.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in and out of this jail for the last ten years.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘How is your son?’

  ‘My family is taking care of him.’

  ‘I have a daughter too,’ she said. ‘People call me a thief. But the poor girl has lost her vision. I need the money to get her operated.’

  I felt sorry for the woman, but I was in a grave situation myself. ‘What about your bail?’

  ‘I don’t have money for that either,’ she said. ‘And these gaandus don’t take me to the court for my hearings. They’ve detained me for the last six months. How am I supposed to get out?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I hope Jaya Maa comes back soon,’ Sapna said. ‘She has promised to help me with the bail bond.’

  Then, she abruptly stood up and left. I noticed she never referred to the cops without adding an expletive, and she had extreme contempt for any form of authority.

  Sapna and her antics were not news to me. As a journalist, I had read stories about her. The woman had once worked in the office of a politician in Mumbai. Her husband, Issac, a native of Karnataka, had died in a road accident. Sapna was left alone to take care of her teenage daughter who was visually challenged. She claimed to have taken her daughter to a hospital in New Delhi more than forty times, but the doctors suggested that she could probably be cured only in the United States. Sapna soon began saving money to make a trip to the US someday.

  Once, Sapna had been to Mangaluru to check the status of an old robbery case. When she got back to her hotel room, she found cash worth Rs 47,000 and gold worth Rs 1.5 lakh missing from her luggage along with her and her daughter’s passports. An angry Sapna did not know what to do. To grab attention, she climbed up on a mobile tower. The drama that went on for hours was widely reported by the media. While the police had recovered the cash and gold from the accused hotel staff, they could not find the passports as the accused had set them afire.

  Paromita warned me against speaking with Sapna.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s a nuisance. The incident you witnessed in the morning happens all the time when she is here.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paromita said. ‘And she will ask you for money.’

  I decided to keep my distance from Sapna. In the evening, the cops called Sapna outside the barracks on the pretext of some work, and took her to an isolated room. Inside Barrack No. 2, I heard her screams, and wished that the cops would stop beating her. After the cops had extracted their revenge for the trouble she had put them through, Sapna limped her way back to Barrack No. 5. Her face was swollen, and she was wailing like a child now. The beating seemed to have crushed her morale, but Paromita was sure that Sapna would be back to her ways sooner than anyone could imagine.

  Over the next few days, Sapna made a lot of effort to draw me into conversation. But I stuck to my lawyer’s advice and responded in as few words as possible. The inmates always judged each other, and they always had an opinion whether or not an undertrial had committed the crime she had been accused of. I learnt from Sapna that most inmates thought I had committed the crime. But I couldn’t care less.

  The constable, Waseema Shaikh, was unusually cordial with me thereafter. She also warned me that any form of friendship with Sapna would only land me in more trouble. The terror of Sapna Pereira was such that even judges were embarrassed by her antics and would make all attempts to ensure she did not land up in their courts. After what Waseema had put me through during the strip search, I was surprised that she was being so friendly with me.

  Once Sapna excitedly walked up to me and began narrating an incident. On a late night in 2007, Sapna had worn a short red skirt, high boots and make-up. Then she had made her way to Juhu, which was her preferred area of operati
on. She had stood at the signal near Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s bungalow, and waved her thumb suggestively at passing cars, a sign that she needed to hitch a ride. Several luxury cars passed by, and then a white ambassador stopped. She rushed towards the car. The tinted windows lowered, and a bald man in his fifties, sitting on the rear seat, popped his head out.

  ‘Need a lift?’ he asked.

  She cast a flirtatious glance at the bald man. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get inside,’ the man said, grinning.

  She ran to the other side and hopped into the car. The driver put the car into gear. As the car drove on, Sapna moved promiscuously close to the bald man. He put his hand on her thigh. She smiled. Encouraged, he moved his hand higher to her waist. She moved closer to him. The man leaned into her, put his hand on her breast and squeezed. Sapna screamed at the top of her lungs and the car screeched to a halt in the middle of the road.

  ‘Bastard!’ Sapna shouted. ‘Are you trying to rape me?’

  The man raised his hands in the air. ‘No, no.’

  Sapna raised her voice. ‘Oh yes, you are! You saw a helpless woman on the road, and you tried to rape her!’

  ‘Please,’ the man said. ‘Please don’t raise your voice.’

  Though it was late at night, there was a considerable crowd on the road as Juhu is usually crowded at that time. Sapna could see heads turn in the car’s direction.

  ‘I will scream now,’ Sapna said. ‘Your lecherous act will be all over the newspapers!’

  ‘Don’t do this.’ The man clasped his hands tightly. ‘I’ll give you anything you want.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Sapna lowered her voice.

  ‘What do you have in your wallet? Show me.’

  ‘Three-and-a-half thousand.’ The man pulled a brown wallet out of the back pocket of his trousers and opened it wide. ‘Take it, take it.’

  Sapna collected the money, and her gaze fell on the man’s wrist. He promptly gave her the wristwatch too.

  ‘Good,’ Sapna said as she rolled the watch down her hands. She leaned into the man and ran her fingers over the chain he was wearing around his neck. ‘Gold?’

 

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