Gurdaspur: Nearly a hundred inmates almost breached the outer periphery wall of the the Gurdaspur central jail facing Litter village, forcing the authorities to deploy 4,000 policemen in an attempt to frustrate their designs.
Senior officers, including ADGP (Prisons) Rohit Chowdhury, ADGP (law and order) Hardeep Dhillon and IG (border) Naunihal Singh, camped inside the premises throughout the night.
As per latest update, Punjab Police shifted 30 prisoners from Gurdaspur central jail to the other jail.
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Prisoners, irked over the alleged high handedness of jail superintendent DS Saini, ransacked the room where gardening tools of the jail staff were lying and made their way to the outer wall to the west of the compound.
Nearly a hundred inmates used the tools to make a hole in the wall, enough to let one man out at a time, before being blinded by tear gas shells.
Before bursting, these shells made a noise akin to gun shots which made residents of nearby colonies panicky with many of them even leaving their homes for safer places.
The ‘internet’ threat was used to keep the marauding cops at bay for hours together. Whenever the police used to go inside the compound, gangsters would curtly tell them that “their activities would be captured on the mobile and uploaded on the internet.”
Residents of nearby colonies complained of uneasiness and itching in their eyes as the gas infiltrated into their homes.
Meanwhile, policemen from all the police districts falling in the Border range had started reaching the premises. By 5 am, the haze had cleared and the prisoners went back to their barracks and cells but not before denting the confidence of the authorities.
“Many questions about jail safety will have to be answered by the jail staff in the next few days. Many heads will roll. What happened in the last 24 hours has been unprecedented,” said a senior officer.