Nine prisoners escape from Meerut jail

The authorities suspended the jail superintendent,RN Upadhyay,deputy jailor and 12 warders for negligence of duty. An inquiry has also been ordered in the case. According to officials,the inmates could come out of the 13-A barrack after cutting two iron rods of the bathroom window when all others were asleep.

Once out of the barrack,they with the help of an improvised ladder crossed 16 and 18-foot-high boundary walls. The ladder was found lying outside the outer boundary wall. “They had made the ladder by using two iron pipes and metal wire,” said DIG,Prisons,AK Panda.

The IG,Prisons,V K Gupta,said it has not yet been established that how the inmates got the material for the ladder. “We are looking into it,” Gupta said.

Luckily for jail authorities,the prisoners did not share their plan with other inmates. In all,the barrack had 98 inmates. Also,none of the inmates woke up,or there could have been an exodus,said jail sources. The officials said the four watch-towers on the outer boundary wall were unmanned. The guards from there were withdrawn some time back as it was reported that they indulged into supply of objectionable articles to prisoners.

A criminal case has been registered against all the nine inmates: Sanjay,Vijay,Manoj alias Rajesh,Sunil,Mobeen,Ikran,Shakeel,Faizan and Shabbir. Of them,Faizan and Shabbir are undertrials in a murder case and the remaining seven are murder convicts.

While Shabbir is a native of Muzaffarnagar,all others are residents of Meerut.