A day after the three main accused in the assassination case of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh slipped out of Burail Jail in Chandigarh, the tunnel they used to crawl to freedom still had people taking turns to peer into the dark for answers. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that officials slept while the alarms clanged. If only they had checked the choked jail sewers, they would have found fresh earth. The dirt that was being shovelled out, while tunnel work was on, ended up in the sewers which choked not once but twice in recent months. Nor did anyone pay any heed to complaints by policemen of strange goings-on at Barrack 7 where the accused were lodged. The police now confirm that the entire sewer system choked twice in 15 days — once in late October and again in November — around the time when digging must have been at its peak. ‘‘But no one cared to find out the source of this earth. Or perhaps they knew but turned a blind eye,’’ an investigating official said. A Chandigarh court has sent to police custody jail superintendent D S Rana and six others: jail DSP D S Sandhu, ASP J S Rana and four constables. Rana was arrested this morning. As for the men who escaped, life in Burail was a breeze. They lived in a huge barrack which had toilets and a kitchen, were regularly supplied expensive deodorants, shampoos, potato wafers, cold drinks, an Aquaguard, sackfuls of onion (80 kg), wheat, desi ghee, volleyballs. Red-faced Chandigarh officials today led mediapersons to the tunnel in the barrack. Covered with a carrom board, the yawning hollow presented quite a sight with its water-plastered sides. ‘‘The shovels and iron rods they had was all they needed,’’ murmured a police official. ‘‘They had curtains on the windows to block the view of guards.’’ The official said constables on duty, alarmed by strange sounds from the barrack, repeatedly complained to their seniors but to no avail. ‘‘They (the accused) used to play the TV full blast through the night. On the night they disappeared, some constables even approached the jail superintendent to press for a thorough inspection of the barrack, but.,’’ the official’s voice trailed off. The jailbirds employed a simple modus-operandi: dig out the earth and then flush it. Water was never a problem, thanks to the huge storage tank next to the barrack. ‘‘They used to throw tantrums when they were not given water at night, forcing the cops to run tubewell on a genset,’’ an official disclosed. The area around the barrack was always dark, not a single streetlight in working condition. Even today, the electricity boards lay ripped open. An officials disclosed that there was a black-out on the night of the escape and the genset too failed to work.
