It has been more than two decades but Shahabuddin Gauri still has several fond memories of Kiran Bedi as Inspector General (IG) of Prisons in Tihar. He recollects how even on a small complaint of being deprived of an old timepiece, she had stepped in to get it back for him.
Gauri, a prisoner then, said before she was appointed IG, the jail administration did not allow prisoners to even take a ball pen refill inside. "But, she converted the jail into college," he said recalling Bedi's prison reforms which won her international acclaim and the Magsaysay Award in 1994.
GN Var, who was also in prison in 1993, when Bedi took over as IG, said she worked non-stop for 12-13 hours a day and always carried a bottle of water with her.
While the memoirs from Jail number 3 bring back tales of her courage, efforts at transparency and reforms she brought about in Tihar jail, the prisoners agree that it was all this that came in her way. "She took decisions on the spot.. The bureaucracy doesn't like quick decisions," said Shahabuddin.
Having worked with her closely inside the jail on education and later, Shahabuddin is of the view that as chief minister she may face the same problems as she did then. "She is not a politician. She has her own way of functioning and unless she gets a free hand, she will not be able to work," he said.
Var, during incarceration worked with fellow inmates for various innovative programmes initiated by Bedi, the main being an establishment of IGNOU, National Open School Study Centres and a grand Library, reflected similar views. "She was daring. Once when a minister visited the jail, she treated him like any common man. This did not go down well." Her personality overshadowed others.
As long as she was IG, Bedi knew every prisoner and addressed every problem, small or big. "There was a water problem once when the pipeline installed in 1952-54 got blocked. She got the staff to get a new pipeline," Shahabuddin said.
At another instance, wary of corruption by jail staff she called their wives and asked them to ask their husbands not to take bribes, he said. She arranged handicraft classes for the wives so that they could work to reduce the burden on their husbands.
Every morning, the jail turned into an institute, when the educated prisoners taught the illiterate.
Ten years after Bedi's tenure as IG, journalist Iftikhar Gilani recollects in his book "most of the reforms she undertook have not survived, especially in the hospital. The doctors still send one common medicine to all the patients, as if the tablet is the panacea for all ailments ranging from fever to stomach ache to cough and cold."
While Var was freed in 2000, Gauri was also released around the same time. Var invited dedicated fellow inmates to Kashmir and formed an NGO "Dr Saxena Vision Foundation" for establishing educational institutions in the Valley. Shahabuddin, now chairman, Tanda municipal corporation, is known as Kejriwal of Rampur.
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