HARIDWAR: Two inmates fled from Haridwar District Jail Friday evening when guards and officials were engrossed in a Ramlila performance inside the prison. The prisoners, one serving a life sentence and another awaiting trial, escaped unnoticed until it was too late for prison authorities to track them.
Even as Haridwar was agog with rumours that the two escapees were playing the role of monkeys in the ‘vanar sena’ (Lord Ram’s army of monkeys) and pretending to search for Sita when they fled, CM Pushkar Singh Dhami ordered a probe into the incident.The investigation will be headed by DIG Prison. Meanwhile, six jail staffers have been suspended on charges of dereliction of duty.
One of the escapees, Pankaj, is a sharpshooter from Praveen Valmiki gang, and was sentenced to life for the murder of a sanitation worker in Roorkee. The other, Rajkumar, hailing from UP’s Gonda is an undertrial facing charges of kidnapping. A third prisoner attempted to escape but failed to climb the wall.
Haridwar DM Karmendra Singh told TOI that the prisoners exploited the jail administration’s negligence. “Jail officials and guards were preoccupied with the show when three prisoners took advantage of the situation and escaped.”
Days before their escape, the three inmates had spotted two ladders left at a construction site inside the jail. During the Ramlila performance, they used the distraction to tie the ladders with clothes and scale the prison wall.
Jail authorities had started the tradition of Ramlila inside the prison a few years ago, allowing inmates to take part in acting while others, including guards, watched.
Cops have filed a case and formed several teams to hunt for the accused. Authorities said that around 550 prisoners released on parole during Covid remain unaccounted for.