J&K Govt orders CBI probe into jailbreak attempt

Significantly, this is the second jail break incident within the Kot Bhalwal prison which has been entrusted to CBI for investigations within less than a year. Earlier, three Pakistani militants – Mohammad Irfan Khan, Mohammad Khaliq and Mohammad Saleem Khan alias Abu Baqar, had escaped from the jail under mysterious circumstances.

Of them, Irfan had tried to assassinate the then Governor K V Krishna Rao, and some senior army officials during the Republic Day parade at M A Stadium here in 1995. While the Governor and army officers had a narrow escape, over half a dozen people werekilled and many others injured in the bomb explosion.

Giving details of the recent jail break attempt, sources said that 11 Pakistani militants, who were lodged in a barrack in block no 2 inside the jail, had dug a tunnel through one of the walls of a nearby septic tank.

The police have recovered two table fans, some blankets, iron rods and wooden logs from the tunnel. Not only this, the militants had even arranged an electricity connection for illumination and had installed other electric gadgets like fans inside the tunnel.

The barracks inside the jail are surrounded by a wall, around 40 feet in height. On the other side of this wall is a compound housing the offices of the Prisons Department, sources said and added that there is another 70- feet-high outer wall at its end.

The distance between the barracks where militants were lodged and the outer wall of the jail is about 100 feet. And, the militants had successfully dug the tunnel about eight to ten feet outside the outer wall. However, whenthey were digging upwards, a CRPF jawan heard the sounds coming from below the earth and raised an alarm.

As the prison staff and the CRPF parties started searching all over the jail premises simultaneously, they noticed two militants running towards their barracks. Getting suspicious, the prison staff and the CRPF jawans rushed towards the barrack, but hardly had they caught hold of the militants that their other accomplices came out of the septic tank in panic.

Pointing out that one of the militant had died of suffocation inside the tunnel, sources said that the others started pelting stones at the prison staff and the CRPF men, injuring about a dozen of them including the jail superintendent. The militants were also injured as the latter resorted to lathicharge to over-power them.

However, the jail break attempt has put a question mark over the security of the Kot Bhalwal jail. It was surprising that the militants used to come out of their barrack with the help of a duplicate key for digging thetunnel every night without attracting the attention of the prison staff or CRPF personnel.

Besides, it was yet to be ascertained as to who had provided table fans to the militants and how they had moulded the iron rods into pointed objects for digging. Another thing that has the police baffled is where did the militants throw the earth they had dug out from the tunnel.

Sources said that connivance or laxity on the part of the prison staff could not be ruled out in view of these questions. Even if one agrees to the version of the prison staff that iron rods and wooden planks were easily available in view of the construction material lying scattered inside the jail premises, one fails to understand that why the digging itself did not attract their attention.

The tunnel was not dug over-night. The militants might have worked on it for the last many months. Moreover, digging sounds are louder in the silence of the night and hence easier to notice.