In the wake of the jail break by eight SIMI activists in Bhopal, the Gujarat Police have conducted a major search operation at the Sabarmati Central jail here to review security measures. The jail houses over 75 prisoners alleged to be SIMI and Indian Mujahideen activists.
Various teams of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) along with the City Crime Branch and the Special Operations Group (SOG) led by ATS Superintendent Himanshu Shukla visited the Central prison on Monday night to acquire first hand information of the overall security arrangements.
As many as 78 prisoners, accused in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blast case and alleged to be associated with SIMI or Indian Mujahideen are currently lodged in a special high security area of the jail.
Alarms, CCTV checkedAssistant Commissioner of Police, city SOG, B.C. Solanki said: “We have set up separate teams led by 18 police inspectors to search each and every barrack of the jail. We have also checked if various security systems such as alarms and CCTV cameras are functional. Nothing suspicious has been found from any prisoner during the search.”
Senior jailor H.M. Shah told reporters that around 100 armed personnel from the State Reserve Police (SRP) were doing round-the-clock patrolling in the jail.
“Apart from our staff, around 100 SRP jawans were deployed to keep a close watch on each and every movement,” Mr. Shah said.
2008 blastsIn the 2008 terror attack, 21 serial blasts had rocked the city on July 26 and claimed 56 lives while hundreds were severely injured.
The Gujarat Police have so far charge-sheeted 100 people in the case, of whom, 78 are behind bars here, while the remaining are still absconding.
Notably, the security at the Sabarmati jail has been a cause of concern for the authorities after some of the accused attempted to escape from jail in February 2012 by digging a 218 foot tunnel inside barrack no. 4.
Following the incident, all the blast accused were shifted to high-security barracks. — PTI
