SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Two major jailbreaks in one month have shone major light on the lack of security in India’s overcrowded and understaffed prisons. Sunday, five armed men in the northern state of Punjab attacked the high-security Nabha prison and freed six inmates. One of the escapees, a Sikh separatist leader, was recaptured on Monday.
The attackers, dressed in police uniforms, arrived “on the pretext of depositing a prisoner” but began firing indiscriminately as soon as the prison gate was opened. They escaped with the inmates in a convoy of vehicles.
“This is what happens when there is diversion of jail staff to non-jail work and infrastructure is creaking,” said retired police officer Prakash Singh.
According to the latest government figures, more than 180 inmates in more than 40 jailbreaks have escaped in the last two years in India. Last year, two inmates escaped from the high-profile Tihar jail in the capital Delhi by digging a tunnel under a wall.
Last month, eight prisoners escaped from a high-security jail in the city of Bhopal in central Madhya Pradesh state. The inmates, members of an outlawed Islamist group, were killed outside Bhopal after they resisted arrest, police said.
India’s prisons are notoriously overcrowded and under-resourced.
The country houses some 1,400 prisons with a population of nearly 420,000 inmates, according to India’s National Crime Records Bureau. More than a third of positions for prison guards and officers are lying vacant. Nearly half of the staff positions in Tihar are vacant.
According to estimates, more than two-thirds of India’s prison population are currently on trial, contributing significantly to the overcrowding. The Bhopal jailbreak, described as an act of coldblooded murder by the inmates’ lawyer, served again to highlight what was wrong with India’s prisons.
The prison houses more than 3,000 inmates, despite being designed with a capacity of 1,400.
The deterioration is a product of no one paying attention to the dying system, retired jail officials said.
