Five days after authorities seized a cellphone from Rajesh Ranjan, alias Pappu Yadav, following a Patna High Court-backed raid in Beur jail, the Supreme Court today asked the CBI to suggest where the RJD MP should be shifted to stop him from violating prison rules.An apex court bench, comprising Justice N Santosh Hegde and Justice S B Sinha, asked the CBI to reply by January 3 whether Yadav could be shifted out of Beur jail in Patna to any other prison in Bihar or outside the state.The court said the CBI should also respond whether Yadav’s trial in the Ajit Sarkar murder case could be conducted through video conferencing after he is shifted from Beur.The Bench also transferred to the apex court the Patna High Court proceedings following the raid. The High Court had issued notices to cellular phone companies to get details of calls made by Yadav to VVIPs from Beur Central Jail, where he was lodged after his bail in the murder case was cancelled.‘‘The notices issued by the High Court to cellular phone companies would be treated as notices issued by the apex court,’’ the Bench said, before posting the matter for further hearing on January 4.The Court assured that the accused would also be given a hearing on the issue when Yadav’s counsel R K Jain gave an undertaking that in future there would be no complaints about his client’s behaviour in the prison.‘‘If the Court finds any violation, its hands were long enough to catch the culprit and take action,’’ Jain said.The Bench observed: ‘‘Our hands were long enough to cancel his bail twice in the case but not long enough to keep him as an undertrial in the prison. We had directed him to be kept in prison not in a five-star hotel.’’Taking a serious view of the presence of large number of alleged supporters of Yadav inside the Beur Jail and the seizure of mobile phones from him, the Bench said: ‘‘this type of cavalier activities cannot be condoned’’.‘‘The impunity with which Yadav is violating the rules under the Jail Manual needs to be taken serious note of,’’ the Bench said.‘‘If we look back, after his bail was cancelled, he was kept in the hospital and given VVIP facilities in the false pretext that there was no bed available in the prison ward,’’ the Bench said, adding that a ‘‘sob story” was being circulated now that Yadav was being denied medical treatment because of the courts.
