National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday morning visited Bengaluru’s Parappana Agrahara Central Prison to probe illegal access to mobile phones among inmates, officials said.
Their visit came amid ongoing concerns about how prisoners have managed to obtain mobile phones and other illegal privileges inside the facility.
According to officials in the know, the NIA’s immediate focus was to determine how Juhad Hameed Shakeel Manna, a suspected ISIS operative, managed to access a mobile phone and to trace the people he had contacted from inside the jail. The team questioned Manna in a separate high-security block where inmates held under the National Security Act (NSA) are lodged, without interfering in other prison matters.
The visit occurred amid growing criticism of Karnataka’s prison administration after several leaked videos showed inmates using mobile phones, watching television, and consuming alcohol inside their cells. Prison officials, however, have reportedly dismissed the leaks as part of a “conspiracy” to discredit the department.
Authorities have prepared a video-based report suggesting that the footage was staged to malign prison staff. However, the controversy has deepened scrutiny over the functioning of the state’s prisons, with the NIA’s renewed interest indicating that the fallout from both the Delhi blast investigation and the alleged prison irregularities may be connected.
Meanwhile, a man with a history of terror-related charges was questioned in Tumakuru on Thursday as part of the investigation into the November 10 car blast in Delhi that killed 12 people, police said, adding that he was released after no evidence was found linking him to the attack.
Officials said the man, identified as Hussain Mujauddin, was interrogated for more than two hours by additional superintendent of police Purushottam at the Tilaknagar police station. He was released after investigators found no evidence of his involvement to the Delhi attack.
Mujauddin, who had been arrested in 2016 for alleged links to banned organisations and for trying to recruit youngsters to join them, was previously lodged in Tihar Jail in Delhi. After serving six years in prison, he returned to Tumakuru, where he has been living a quiet life in the Tilak Park area, police said.
