Plotting the perfect jailbreak

Ramanpreet Singh Virdi

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What is the most foolproof formula to escape from a highly fortified jail in India? In his debut book ‘The Most Notorious Jailbreakers’, journalist Abeer Kapoor delves into the dark underbelly of the country’s prisons to answer this question as he documents the events that led to the 16 most audacious jailbreaks. Kapoor uses his first-hand experience as a crime reporter to familiarise the reader with the “language of the prison” and calls it fascinating to “note how prisons are a world unto themselves”. In fact, right at the introduction, he actually lists a five-step formula to escape from the biggest jail in the country!

Dreaded gangsters, unscrupulous policemen, a maze of rookie accomplices and, above all, a broken law enforcement system, all come alive, but the writer doesn’t let the grotesqueness seep into the narrative. Rather, he wishes “to keep it fun” and makes the storytelling taut and edgy.

The stories are set in a vast range of time — from the 1940s to as late as 2016 — and explore the caste-ridden rivalries of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, to the gangster-cop nexus in Punjab. Quoting numerous writers and news reports, Kapoor manages to infuse a sense of authenticity and urgency into the narrative, giving a chilling glimpse of the sordid realities that convicts and prison staff have to confront every day. The criminals here aren’t the usual stereotype who rape and murder without batting an eyelid. Rather, they are presented as devious, ambitious men who have the knack of disappearing into the crowd and becoming the ordinary once they have escaped. One of them also involves a former Prime Minister of the princely state of Hyderabad! To heighten the intrigue, the writer goes back and forth in time, beginning the story with the re-arrest after the jailbreak, and then leading you to the day when the actual crime took place.

The 16 short biographies feature some of the most macabre criminals the country has seen. In telling their stories, Kapoor also manages to drive home another important point: the absolute culpability and brazen participation of police officials in aiding the jailbreaks. Natwarlal, known as India’s greatest con man, is quoted as saying, “As long as there is one dishonest cop, I will always find a way to get out!”

The chapter on Bitihotra Mohanty, alias Raghav Rajan, is arguably the most fascinating because of the sheer audaciousness of the events. Yet, Kapoor neither glorifies violence, nor justifies the deranged behaviour. The law may take time to catch up but ultimately, retribution is inevitable. If gangsters and jails arrest your attention, this is the perfect escape for a lazy Sunday afternoon.