The emblematic case came in September 2024, when the Anti-Narcotics Task Force arrested drug inspector Shishan Mittal of Mohali for facilitating illegal pharmaceutical smuggling. He was in contact with jailed smugglers and ran the network outside; the ANTF froze 24 bank accounts holding ₹7.09 crore, seized two bank lockers, recovered ₹1.49 crore in cash, 260 g of gold and foreign currency, and identified real estate worth ₹2.40 crore in Zirakpur and Dabwali. The DGP called him 'the kingpin of a gang involving jailed traffickers.'
Source: IANS via The Rahnuma (Sep 13, 2024); Devdiscourse (Sep 2024)
Phones are the infrastructure. Over 400 were recovered from Punjab jails in 2025 (till October) and 467 in 2024 — many tossed over walls by outsiders, with jail officials 'under the scanner.' The judicial record confirms operational control from inside: in January 2024 the Punjab and Haryana High Court noted a prisoner had arranged five 1-kg packets of heroin from Pakistan contacts over WhatsApp while sitting in jail, and demanded the Home Secretary's affidavit on prison phone security. A January 2025 narco-terrorism hawala network — 11 held, ₹5 crore in mixed currencies — was allegedly masterminded by an inmate of Central Jail Amritsar in contact with a Pakistani smuggler.
Source: Face2News (Oct 2025); LiveLaw (Jan 2024); NewsNarad (Jan 2025)
The rot keeps surfacing. In October 2026, Ludhiana police registered four FIRs naming 22 people — 17 inmates, two assistant superintendents, two security guards and a warder — for supplying phones and drugs to Ludhiana Central and Borstal jails; inmates were allegedly buying narcotics inside via digital payment platforms. The same month, former Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar wrote to the Home Minister demanding NIA and ED probes into the prison drug trade — and alleged the Mansa inspector, after bail, was reinstated and given an important headquarters posting. That reinstatement claim is a political allegation, not a proven finding — but the pattern it points at is documented in FIR after FIR.
Source: AIR News (Oct 2026); ReportWire (Oct 14, 2026); IANS via DailyWorld (Oct 17, 2026)