Gopalganj superintendent of police KS Anupam (front) enters the district jail for inspection after Dr Budhdeo Singh’s murder on Sunday. Picture by Awadhesh Kumar Ranjan

Patna, June 2: The brutal murder of Budhdeo Singh has brought under the glare the woeful condition of jails in Bihar.

Consider the facts: as many as 22 jails don’t have full fledged superintendents. Two posts of deputy superintendents and 156 posts of assistant jailors are lying vacant for long. The vacant posts of 37 chief warders, 366 senior warders and 3,909 warders have not been filled up.

The large number of vacancies in different categories in the 55 jails, including eight central jails, sums up the scenario in the state’s prisons, notorious for overcrowding and poor living conditions. The Bihar State Human Rights Commission (BSHRC) is also flooded with the complaints of lack of proper medical facilities for the prisoners.

Statistics with The Telegraph show that 39 posts of regular doctors, 154 posts of doctors on contractual basis, 94 posts of compounders, 88 posts of readers and two posts of jailors are still lying vacant.

A proposal to appoint retired army personnel in posts equivalent to warders to maintain law and order inside the prison is also gathering dust. Altogether 609 ex-army personnel are to be appointed in the posts of warders. The condition of sanitation can be gauged from the fact that all 525 posts of barbers and cleaning cadre staff are vacant.

The acute shortage of manpower poses a serious law and order problem and a security threat for jail officials who live under constant threat from hardened criminals.

Underworld dons have virtually laid siege to the prisons. The seizure of mobile phones, bottles of liquor, narcotics and other objectionable items suggests that dons get everything they wish for — in connivance with prison staff and the security personnel.

Inmates don’t hesitate in taking the law into their hands. At least one dozen incidents of attacks on jail officials have been reported in the past six months.

Budhdeo Singh, the doctor posted at Gopalganj district jail, was killed allegedly because he refused to issue fake medical certificates declaring the convicts sick that would have prevented their transfer to a high-security central prison at Buxar.

This is not the first time that a jail doctor has been threatened. Only a fortnight ago, former Purnea MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, who is serving a life sentence in the Beur central jail in the Ajit Sarkar (former Purnea MLA) murder case, was accused of threatening jail doctor Jai Bahadur Singh with dire consequences.

Though Beur jail superintendent Om Prakash Gupta refused to comment, sources said the doctor sent a letter to the IG (prisons), the district magistrate and the senior superintendent of police demanding adequate security.

“I was asked by Pappu Yadav to issue a fake medical certificate so that he could avoid the Purnea police remand. When I refused to oblige, he threatened that I would be killed,” Jai Bahadur Singh said.

The doctor said he had lodged a complaint with the civil surgeon through minutes of the jail book and sent copies to the IG (prisons), district magistrate and the jail superintendent. “But I’m yet to get any assurance from anywhere for my security,” he said. The threat was issued on April 27 but it came out of the wraps only recently.

Sources said at least six prison department officials, including an assistant jailor, have been killed in the past decade. Forty-two of the complaints related to death of prisoners were disposed of while 206 are still pending with the BSHRC, sources said.