Midnight jailbreak bid thwarted by 3,000 cops

Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, March 25

After two staffers were attacked and riot and arson was reported from the Gurdaspur jail yesterday morning, nearly a hundred prisoners made a daring midnight attempt to breach the complex’s outer periphery wall, forcing the authorities to deploy about 3,000 policemen to contain the situation. 

Fresh trouble began around 11 pm and it took the police nearly six hours to bring the situation under control. More than 70 teargas shells were fired in what is being termed as one of the most daring jailbreak attempts in recent times. 

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DGP (Law and Order) Hardeep Dhillon, ADGP (Prisons) Rohit Chowdhury and IG (Border) Naunihal Singh camped inside the jail through the night. 

Irked over alleged high-handedness of Jail Superintendent Dilbagh Singh, the inmates first ransacked a room where gardening tools of the jail staff were kept. They took the implements and rushed towards the compound’s outer wall. Once there, they cut a hole, big enough to let one man escape at a time, in the 13-inch-thick concrete wall, only to be stopped in their tracks by teargas shells fired by the police personnel from outside. The exploding shells made a noise akin to gun shots, which led to panic in nearby colonies with many residents fleeing their homes for safer places. The inmates reportedly used internet “threat” to check the advancing policemen. Whenever the police tried to go inside, the gangsters would tell them that “their activities would be captured on the mobile and uploaded on the internet”. 

Following these threats, the policemen would beat a hasty retreat. At the same time, an audio clip, prepared by an inmate detailing the reasons why the prisoners were angry, went viral, leaving the officials red-faced at the turn of events. Senior officers had no clue as to how and when these mobile phones were smuggled inside the high-security complex. 

Hardened criminal Jagtar Singh Jagga was in possession of one such phone before it was snatched away. Jagga along with around 10 other inmates was later shifted to other jails, including five to Bathinda. He and Pardeep Uppal were the two gangsters who prodded others to join the battle against the police.  The situation was so volatile that Chowdhury had to requisition forces from the four border range police districts of Tarn Taran, Batala, Amritsar and Pathankot. 

How drama unfolded in Gurdaspur

• Around 11 pm, siren goes off after 900-odd prisoners raise slogans against jail supdt
• First teargas shell is soon after lobbed near a group of inmates
• Ploy to create fear fails, prisoners step out of barracks en masse into compound
• Mobile phone jammer and CCTV cameras are damaged, mess halls ransacked and garden tool room broken into
• Rumours of officials being taken hostage worsen things
• At 2 am, prisoners manage to reach outer wall and carve out a hole
• Cops lob teargas shells, inmates retreat; situation under control by 5.30 am