JAMMU: Security personnel on Wednesday recovered a smartphone from an undertrail prisoner in the central jail on the outskirts of Jammu city, officials said.

According to officials, based on a tip-off a search was conducted leading to the recovery of the phone in the the jail in Kot Bhalwal area. Police seized the device and a case has been registered at the Gharota police station.

The device has been sent to a forensic laboratory and an investigation has been launched into how the smartphone reached the undertrial in such a high-security prison, which is guarded by three-tier security by Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel.

Kot Bhalwal jail houses more than 1000 prisoners, including terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad outfits.

It is not the first time that a mobile phone has been recovered from Kot Bhalwal jail. On January 10 last year, a smartphone was recovered from the possession of a jailed terrorist of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

In July 2021, police recovered 12 mobile phones, SIM cards, and other electronic gadgets from the possession of some inmates in the prison.

Police had recovered some mobile phones and SIM cards from three terrorists, including top Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) commander Abdul Rehman Mughal of Pakistan, in April 2020.

During a raid in 2019, police recovered a large number of mobile phones and SIM cards. In 1999, nearly a dozen Pakistani terrorists had dug a 100-foot underground tunnel from their barrack in an attempt to escape, but they were caught by jail officials when they were hardly four or five feet away.