Chances of finding Sajjad Mughal bleak: J&K police

Jammu and Kashmir police officers say there is no trace of Sajjad Mughal, accused arrested for the murder of Mumbai-based lawyer Pallavi Purkayastha. Mughal who was serving a life imprisonment sentence at Nashik Jail jumped parole in March, which he had been granted to visit his family in Uri, Baramulla district of the J&K.

Mughal was granted parole to visit his ailing mother on February 28. This was to end in March but Mughal did not return to the prison. While Maharashtra police officials and prison authorities claimed that they had informed the J&K police before he head out for Uri and even after he went missing, this was vehemently denied by the J&K authorities.

Speaking to The Asian Age previously, senior superintendent of police, Baramulla district in J&K, Imtiyaz Hussain Mir had said that they had not been kept in loop by the prison authorities. “The first information we received about the convict named Sajjad Mughal was at May-end when Nashik police told us that he had not returned to the prison after being granted a month’s parole,” Mir had said.

Following this the J&K police started looking for him. But when contacted on Monday, the officials said the chances of finding him were looking bleak. “By the time we started looking for him, it had been over two months since he was seen in his hometown. We did enquire with his family and friends, but nobody had a clue,” a police officer from J&K said. He added that they even posted personnel round the clock near Mughal’s house, but that too yielded no results. “His family says he came home once and then after that he was not to be seen,” he said.

The officer is quick to say that if they had been given better intimation, they would have found him.

“If the Prison authorities and Nashik Police had informed us, then we would have done the necessary procedures and also deployed an officer to keep tabs on him,” he said.

He hints that there are chances he may no longer be in the state. “We are still investigating but it doesn’t look like he is in Uri or even in the state,” he said.

Following the fiasco, deputy inspector general of prisons, Rajendra Dhamane, headed an internal inquiry against the Nashik central jail authorities. Based on the findings of this report, the superintendent J.S. Naik was suspended.