The Tihar Jail authorities have received a huge amount of Rs. 1.23 crore from the Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy for providing him with the special facilities in his special cell for the last one year. Subrata Roy has been shifted to an ordinary cell in November and the as per the authorities, the amount received from him is sufficient for taking care of 200 prisoners for a year.
On March 4, 2014, Subrata Roy was sent to the jail with Ashok Roy Choudhary and Ravi Shankar Dubey, two of Sahara group’s directors as he didn’t refunded the amount of Rs. 20,000 crore with interest to the investors.
The court has asked him to pay Rs. 10,000 crore for getting bail, out of this 10,000 crore he was asked to pay half in cash and half in form of bank guarantee. He was kept in a high security ward. However, the Supreme Court gave him the permission to use the conference room so that he can have meetings over there for selling his luxury hotels situated in New York and London, so as to arrange for the bail.
TOI came to know this from sources, “Tihar Jail authorities have received Rs 1,23,70,000 from Sahara Group for using the conference room. The payment includes charges for security, electricity, maintenance, rent and other facilities like food and water. The group is yet to submit Rs 7.5 lakh rupees more.”
As per the sources, Subrata Roy was first shifted to special cell in August 5 for a time period of 10 days and during this time period he was allowed to use WiFi and video conferencing, so that he can have discussions with the potential purchasers.
A top official told, “Functioning from the fully air-conditioned room, Roy was also allowed two laptops, two desktops, landline phones and a cellphone. For these facilities, the Sahara Group will pay directly to the service providers. Roy’s stenographer and other assistants were also allowed to help him during the permitted time slot from 6am to 8pm.”
Subrata Roy’s son and few of his company’s directors were the regular visitors, and all the meetings were done under CCTV cameras. On November 12, Subrata Roy was sent to the usual cell and all the special services were stopped as per the order from court.
Should he be treated as any other prisoner?
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