Calcutta, June 18: An undertrial returned to prison from court, jumped off the van, picked up one of the jail wardens, lifted and shook him in the air.

“Duniya ki koi zanjeer mujhe rok nahi sakti, chhor do mujhe abhi (No chain in the world that can restrain me, let me go right now),” Sukhdev Singh barked when other wardens grabbed him to free their dangling colleague.

It took the combined strength of six jail employees to finally pin down the man sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder and abduction but also being tried for other crimes. And he was still screaming: “Yeh salakhein hamare liye kuch nahin hain, tod denge sab kuch (These iron bars are nothing for me, I will smash everything).”

Gabbar Singh would have been proud of the performance, except that this Singh was himself smashed — as in drunk to his gills.

Sloshed? Between prison to court and back?

Yes. Singh, a huge man in his 40s, smuggled booze into the court lockup

A jail official said: “He left (on Tuesday) with other undertrials to face trial in the Alipore sessions court. We found nothing wrong in his behaviour when he was boarding the prison van.”

Policemen didn’t smell anything when Singh was lodged in the court lockup. “He was produced before the magistrate and again brought back to the lockup. He stayed there for more than two hours,” said a police officer.

As he was being taken out of the lockup, Singh appeared normal. “In the prison van, he was sitting silently with his head down,” the officer said.

It was when he was getting off the van that his head seemed to be spinning. “He couldn’t stand on his feet. When we went close to him, he was thrashing about and shouting profanities,” said a jail official.

Investigation revealed that Singh had managed to sneak half a bottle of rum into the lockup once he was brought back after being produced in court.

“On every trial day, Singh’s friends come to the court to meet him and give him money. Yesterday, Singh gave some money to his contacts, who are active on the court premises and get undertrials what they want for money,” said the official.

During questioning, Singh admitted as much. “We suspect he consumed the alcohol quickly without water. While he was being brought back in the prison van, the liquor caught up with him,” the official added.

Singh may have had the strength to lift a man off his feet but not the guts to hold down half a bottle of bad medicine.