Nalini flings mobile into jail toilet

Prison authorities retrieve phone, send it for analysis

The 44-year-old Nalini, whose plea for early release has been rejected by the Tamil Nadu government, had kept the mobile phone in a cloth bag. It was detected during routine checks in the jail. Two SIM cards were also found in Nalini’s cell. This is probably the first case of a mobile phone being recovered from an inmate of the Vellore special prison for women. Nalini’s husband and LTTE militant, Murugan’s cell is also being searched.

State Law Minister Durai Murugan told the state Assembly on Wednesday that during a routine check by the jail officials on Tuesday, Nalini was found to be having a mobile phone in her bag. The officials tried to take it, but Nalini, in a desperate haste grabbed it from them, flung into the toilet and flushed it.

“The mobile was later recovered by the jail staff in a wet condition and it has been sent to the service provider to decode all the calls and messages made with it,” Murugan said.

SIM cards seized
There was no word on whether the prisoner had been using it for the last four years. Only an investigation could reveal all that. Two SIM cards were also seized from her, he added.

Senior Congress MLA C Gnanasekharan alleged that Nalini had been illegally using a mobile phone in her cell for the last four years, “talking to people in London and Canada.” He demanded a thorough probe into the matter.
But outside, Nalini’s lawyer Pugazhendhi counter-charged that the seizure episode was “to divert” people’s attention from the negative fallout of the deportation of Parvathi Ammal, slain LTTE chief Prabhakaran’s mother.

‘Vindictive action’
Pugazhendhi, who again met the lifer in jail on Wednesday, termed it a “vindictive action” by the prison officials against Nalini, who was the main witness in another woman inmate’s harassment case inside the jail. “They are trying to fix her,” he charged.
The mobile phone seizure could impinge on Nalini’s renewed plea for early release as it would be seen as a blot in the conduct of the prisoner, sources said, adding, this episode was the ‘third headache’ for the DMK regime here within a week after Parvathi Ammal’s deportation.

The ‘first headache’ Karunanidhi has been living with now is the unexplained sudden “personal jaunt’ by his elder son and Union Fertiliser Minister, M K Azhagiri to Maldives, when Parliament is in session and reportedly without getting the Prime Minister’s nod.
DH News Service