More than a week after it was established that Ahmed Mughal alias Pathan, a convict serving life sentence in the sensational Pallavi Purkayastha murder case, had jumped parole, the Maharashtra Government has ordered the suspension of then prison superintendent of Nashik prison for recommending parole to Mughal.
Confirming the suspension of Nashik’s then jail superintendent JS Naik, Additional Director General of Police (Prisons) BK Upadhyaya said on Friday that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis signed the suspension order on Thursday evening.
Fadnavis, who holds the State Home portfolio, has ordered suspension of Naik based on an inquiry report submitted last week by Deputy Inspector General (Jails) Rajendra Dhamne. In his report, Dhamne had said that Naik had committed “a grave error” by recommending parole to Mughal.
Naik, who took over as the superintendent of Amravati jail a few weeks back, currently faces a departmental inquiry for granting furlough to two persons convicted in terrorism related charges and had escaped while out on leave.
In both the cases, the convicts who had been granted furlough, did not return to jail on the expiry of their furlough. Incidentally, under the amended rules of the Maharashtra Prison Rules, terror convicts were not entitled to avail furlough during their prison term.
Pallavi, daughter of a senior New Delhi-based IAS officer Atanu Purkayastha, was brutally murdered by Mughal, a security guard working at a high-rise building “Himalayan Heights” at Wadala in north-central Mumbai, after she after she resisted his attempt to rape her in her 16th floor flat at Wadala here on August 9, 2012.
Apart from slitting Pallavi’s throat, Mughal had stabbed her in face, chest, cheeks and both the hands, with knife that he had carried with him when he stealthily entered into her flat using a key that he had stolen from the flat when he visited the flat along with an electrician to restore power in an hour earlier.
Following a recommendation by Naik On February 24, 2016, Divisional Commissioner Eknath Dawle had granted Mughal parole to Mughal on the ground that the latter’s mother was sick.
However, Mughal jumped parole after his request for extension was rejected by the jail authorities in March this year.