Close on the heels of the Bhopal jailbreak, two prisoners escaped from the Central Prison of Warangal on Saturday, exposing the security lapses.
The fugitives were identified as Rajesh Yadav of Bihar and Sainik Singh of Uttar Pradesh.
Sainik Singh, who was working as a craftsman in the Army at Secunderabad cantonment, had been convicted of stealing a weapon while Rajesh Yadav had been undergoing life imprisonment for committing a murder in Ranga Reddy district.
The duo made a rope of bedsheets to scale and slide down a 20-foot-high wall equipped with power fence, after successfully managing to sneak out of two inner security layers.
They succeeded in breaking out three-layered security of the prison guarded by armed personnel from four watch towers on the outer wall of the prison. Their escape method was similar to that of undertrial SIMI activists who had run away from the Bhopal jail recently.
Jail superintendent K Newton and other officers were alerted to the escape of the prisoners around 4 a.m. Mr Netwon said the prisoners escaped between 2.30 a.m. and 3 a.m.
Assistant Commissioner of Police S. M. Surendranath told newspersons that the prisoners broke the lock of their barrack using an iron rod. They tied the rod to a rope of bedsheets and used it as a hook to get hold of the wall.
City Police Commissioner G. Sudheer Babu, DIG (Prisons) K Keshava Naidu and other officials visited the prison. Director-General of Prisons and Correctional Services V. K. Singh also arrived here to take stock of the situation.
Mr Singh said a departmental inquiry would be conducted into the incident and action would be taken against the jail staff for failing to ensure proper security at the prison.
The jail officials contended that they did not have CC cameras to monitor prisoners’ movements. However, they failed to answer how the live eletric wires failed to prevent the prisoners or entries on watch towers could not watch and nab the escaping prisoners.
The city police launched a manhut for the fugitives.
