Official probe admits neglect, says jailbreak was waiting to happen

Till late this evening, only five of the inmates had been traced.

Prepared by Superintendent of Police (Dantewara) Rahul Sharma, the report has been submitted to Principal Secretary (Home) N K Aswal, Director General of Police Vishwaranjan and ADGP (Intelligence) A K Shrivastava.

The Chhattisgarh government has ordered a magisterial inquiry. After suspending five prison staff yesterday, the government today suspended DIG (Prisons) P D Verma, who was in charge of prison security in the state, and arrested Jailor V S Mankar.

“The jailor was arrested after sustained interrogation pointed to a link between the jail staff and the inmates who escaped,” SP Rahul Sharma said.

Mankar has been booked under Sections 128, 129 and 130 of the Indian Penal Code which pertain to a public servant facilitating escape of prisoners.

Even 24 hours after the incident, the prison authorities were yet to make a list of the fugitives, the crimes under which they had been booked and the break-up of undertrials and convicts among those who fled.

“It will take some more time as other investigations are also on simultaneously,” stated Director General of Police (Prisons) S K Paswan.

The preliminary report of the Chhattisgarh police slams the prison authorities at every level:

• The 377 inmates, almost all of whom managed to flee, were being guarded by just three securitymen —- all unarmed. Even the mandatory armed guard outside the main prison gate was missing. “The fleeing inmates could have been stopped if an armed guard was present outside the main gate,” the report says. “The security for a prison facility in a hyper-sensitive Naxalite area was almost nil.”

• Noting how the guards had capitulated, the report says: “There is an urgent need to upgrade the training and weapons-handling ability of prison guards.”

• A Central government circular issued after the Jehanabad jail break —- in which over 137 Naxalites had fled —- to separate Maoists from other prisoners was “completely overlooked”.

• An official request to move the 105 Maoist sympathisers from the Dantewara Sub-Jail to a central prison, with better security, had not been heeded.

• Intelligence gathering had completely failed. “The presence of a few informers within the inmates could have thwarted such an attempt,” says the report.

Sources point out that the self-styled Naxalite commander Sujeet Kumar who is believed to have led the inmates was a “nambardaar” —- an inmate chosen by prison staff to help day-to-day functioning and manning of affairs in the jail.

In the search operations conducted on Monday, blades, packets of red chilli powder, and equipment that could cut through rods were recovered from barracks. Authorities say this clearly indicated that the jail break was being planned for some time.

Home Minister Ram Vichar Netam refused to comment on the preliminary report on Monday, saying the police were doing their best to track down the fugitives. “An aerial search is being conducted,” he added.

Accusing the Raman Singh government of failure to check the Maoist mence, former chief minister Ajit Jogi of the Congress demanded his resignation on Monday. “The four-year term of Raman Singh has seen nothing but bloodshed and reversal after reversal on the Naxalite front. The law and order situation has all but collapsed. The Chief Minister should own up moral responsibility,” he said.

What happened on Sunday

• A self-styled Naxalite commander, Sujeet Kumar (25), led the inmates

• There was a skirmish between the inmates at around 4.50 pm, when tea was being served. As guards Sunil Pujari and Jaiprakash Kannoja intervened, the prisoners attacked them. By 5.10 pm, they had broken open the lock on the main gate and fled to the dense forest area behind

• From the armoury on the prison premises, the inmates looted one INSAS rifle, two .303 rifles, three muskets and a wireless set. They also took a number of bullets, and jail authorities are still trying to determine the exact count