In October 2026, Ludhiana police registered four FIRs naming 22 people for allegedly supplying mobile phones and drugs inside the city's Central and Borstal jails. Seventeen of the accused were inmates. The other five were the men paid to guard them — two assistant superintendents, two security guards and a warder. It was the latest file in a thickening record that points the same way: in Punjab, the prison wall no longer ends a drug network. Increasingly, the network's office is inside it. This is Awaaz Punjab Jaanch Report #2.

Source: AIR News (Oct 2026)

The phone is the office

Every jail-run network in this report begins with the same piece of equipment: a smuggled mobile phone. More than 400 phones were recovered from Punjab's jails in 2025 (till October), after 467 in 2024 — many of them tossed over perimeter walls by outsiders, according to jail officials, who say the recoveries also reflect tighter vigilance. The officials have a point about geography: housing and roads have come up close to several jail boundaries, making it easier to throw packets inside. But the same reporting notes that jail officials themselves are 'under the scanner' — and the courts have not accepted vigilance as the whole answer.

Source: Face2News (Oct 2025)

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has been tracking the problem since 2023, when it took suo motu notice of mobile phones in prisons after a gangster's interview from custody went viral. In January 2024, the court recorded that a prisoner had arranged five 1-kg packets of heroin from Pakistan-based contacts over WhatsApp while sitting inside jail, and it demanded the state Home Secretary's affidavit on prison phone security. A full bench later held that jail staff share 'vicarious inculpability' when a prisoner is found with a phone — the law's way of saying a phone does not walk into a cell by itself.

Source: LiveLaw (Jan 2024); LiveLaw, Achan Kumar full bench (2024)

Orders from inside: three cartels, three jails

The clearest blueprint came in December 2023, when Amritsar police unravelled an inter-state pharma cartel and seized 14,72,220 tramadol tablets and capsules at a manufacturer in Ahmedabad. Police said the supply chain took its directions from two men who were not free to give them: Yogesh Kumar Rinku, an inmate of Mansa Jail, and Major Singh, who allegedly directed a street peddler by phone from Goindwal Sahib Jail. Phones were recovered from both inmates inside their jails, and forged documents of a Hapur wholesale firm moved the pills from Gujarat through Uttar Pradesh to Amritsar. Twelve people were arrested.

Source: ANI via WebIndia123 (Dec 25, 2023); Devdiscourse (Dec 2023)

Thirteen months later, the Anti-Narcotics Task Force busted a Pakistan-backed narco-terrorism hawala network — 11 arrested, about ₹5 crore in Indian and foreign currencies recovered. DGP Gaurav Yadav said the racket's mastermind was Harbhaj Singh alias Bheja, an inmate of Central Jail Amritsar, who was in contact with Pakistani smuggler Shehbaz from inside the jail. The detail that should worry the jail department most: police said Bheja and an associate first met Shehbaz when all of them were lodged together in Central Jail Amritsar — Shehbaz had been jailed there after entering India illegally, before being deported. The jail, in other words, made the introduction; the phone kept it alive. The money moved through a Phagwara forex firm, Sharma Forex, whose owner was among those arrested.

Source: Punjab Police via Bright Punjab Express (Jan 2025); NewsNarad (Jan 2025)

In June 2025, Amritsar police dismantled a third network, this one allegedly run by Arshdeep Singh from Goindwal Jail: six operatives arrested, 4.526 kg of heroin and ₹8.7 lakh in drug money recovered, and — once again — the mobile phone the jailed operator had been using was seized from inside the jail. Police said the cartel's proceeds were laundered through hawala to Dubai and onward to Pakistan.

Source: ANI via WebIndia123 (Jun 10, 2025); 5DariyaNews (Jun 2025)

The money trail: one inspector, 24 accounts

If the inmates are the trade's jailed managers, its most valuable free employee wore a government badge. In August 2024, the Special Task Force froze 24 bank accounts linked to drug inspector Shishan Mittal — held in his own name and, police said, as benami accounts in relatives' names — and seized bank lockers, ₹9.31 lakh in cash, 260 g of gold and foreign currency in raids across Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh; FIR 121/2024 invoked NDPS sections 29 and 59 and organised-crime provisions of the BNS. On 13 September 2024, the ANTF arrested Mittal at Aerocity, Mohali. By then the frozen accounts held ₹7.09 crore; police recovered ₹1.49 crore in cash and identified property including Zirakpur flats worth about ₹2 crore and a ₹40 lakh plot in Dabwali. DGP Gaurav Yadav said preliminary investigation showed Mittal was regularly in touch with drug smugglers lodged inside jail and 'facilitated their drug network outside', describing him as the kingpin of a gang involving jailed traffickers; the probe also found he had travelled abroad repeatedly without government permission. Mittal is an accused in an ongoing case: the allegations against him are the police's, and no conviction has been reported.

Source: Devdiscourse (Sep 13, 2024); IANS via The Rahnuma (Sep 13, 2024); Devdiscourse (Aug 2024)

The inspector case: a timeline

August 2024 — STF teams raid locations across Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. Twenty-four accounts linked to Mittal are frozen (₹6.69 crore at that stage), bank lockers are seized, and FIR 121/2024 is registered under the NDPS Act and the BNS.

Source: Devdiscourse (Aug 2024); Punjab Police via WishavWarta (Aug 8, 2024)

13 September 2024 — The ANTF arrests Shishan Mittal at Aerocity, Mohali, after technical surveillance and human intelligence, in an operation headed by Special DGP Kuldeep Singh. The frozen total in the 24 accounts now stands at ₹7.09 crore; ₹1.49 crore in cash and 260 g of gold have been recovered; the DGP calls him the kingpin of a gang involving jailed traffickers.

Source: IANS via The Rahnuma (Sep 13, 2024); 5DariyaNews (Sep 13, 2024)

2025–26 — Mittal is released on bail at some point in this period; the reports reviewed for this story do not record the date, and no trial outcome has been reported.

Source: IANS via DailyWorld (Oct 17, 2026)

17 October 2026 — Former Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar writes to Union Home Minister Amit Shah. ALLEGATION: Jakhar alleges that after bail, the AAP government reinstated Mittal in service and gave him 'an important position at his department's headquarters'. He demands an NIA probe into the drug trade operating from prisons and an ED probe into its money laundering. The reinstatement claim is Jakhar's allegation: it has not been independently established, and no Punjab government response to it appears in the coverage reviewed for this report.

Source: IANS via DailyWorld (Oct 17, 2026); DirectHeadlines (Oct 2026); PunjaBene News (Oct 17, 2026)

What the agencies have done

The enforcement record is real — and it keeps proving the problem. The ANTF and district police have repeatedly reached inside the jails: production warrants against named inmates, phones seized from cells, networks dismantled in 2023, 2025 and 2026. The jail department's technical answer, as the state told the High Court, is AI-based CCTV cameras in eight jails with work underway in six more, and V-Kavach jammers installed at Central Jail Bathinda and being fitted in ten more 'sensitive' jails. In 2022, a 50-day special drive pulled 710 phones out of the state's jails, and the Chief Minister promised to end 'VIP culture' behind bars. Yet the recovery curve has not bent: 467 phones in 2024, more than 400 in 2025, and fresh FIRs against jail staff in October 2026.

Source: LiveLaw (HC affidavit hearing); Madhyamam (2022 drive); Face2News (Oct 2025)

The wider integrity question reached the police's own top ranks in the same month: on 9 October 2026, the ED arrested suspended DIG Harcharan Singh Bhullar under the PMLA in a corruption and disproportionate-assets case built on two CBI FIRs. The ED says CBI searches at Bhullar's home recovered ₹7.37 crore in cash and ₹2.32 crore in jewellery, and puts the alleged proceeds of crime at about ₹9.68 crore, including property across Punjab; Bhullar's counsel has contested the ED's custody and its delay. To be precise: the Bhullar case concerns alleged bribery and assets, not drugs — no agency has accused him of running a drug network. It belongs in this report for one reason only: a jail and police system can fight the drug trade only as honestly as its own officers, and in the very fortnight that Ludhiana's jail staff were being booked, a DIG was in ED custody over unexplained crores.

Source: ANI via ApnaMATV (Oct 12, 2026); Devdiscourse, ED release (Oct 2026); SSB Crack (Oct 2026)

What remains unanswered

Five questions this record leaves open. One: has the Home Ministry acted on Jakhar's 17 October letter — is there an NIA or ED file on the prison drug trade? No action had been publicly reported when this report was prepared. Two: where does the Mittal prosecution stand — chargesheet, trial, outcome? The reports reviewed record an arrest in September 2024 and silence since. Three: the reinstatement allegation itself — in the coverage reviewed, the Punjab government has neither confirmed nor denied that an inspector arrested in a drug case returned to a headquarters posting. Four: have jammers and AI cameras actually reduced phone use inside? The High Court asked the state this exact question; the 2025 recovery figures are not an encouraging answer. Five: of the jail staff named in FIRs like Ludhiana's, how many are prosecuted — and how many are simply transferred, like the warder named in Ludhiana who, the FIR reporting says, had been moved to Ropar Jail in July and allegedly carried on from there?

Source: PunjaBene News (Oct 17, 2026); AIR News (Oct 2026)

How Awaaz Punjab verified this report: every figure above is drawn from a named source — Punjab Police and DGP statements, ED and court reporting, and agency wires (IANS, ANI) carried by at least two outlets, or an official release. Claims made by police about accused persons are reported as police claims; every person named as an accused here faces allegations, not convictions, unless a court record says otherwise. Political claims — including the reinstatement allegation — are labelled as allegations, with the alleger named. Read our full method on the How We Verify page.