After recent jailbreaks resulted in the flight of KlF chief and other criminals from Nabha (Punjab) and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) ultras from Bhopal (MP) jails, an Intelligence report has exposed the security system at the high- profile lucknow district jail.
Not only poor security arrangements inside the jail, the report also apprehends that official negligence could lead to more serious incidents than at Nabha jail as the jail armoury does not have adequate security deployed for its sfaguard.
The Intel report has been been sent to SSP, District Magistrate of lucknow and also to the state government for necessary action.
Reacting to the reports, DM of lucknow Satyendra Singh said on Wednesday that he along with SSP Manzil Saini inspected lucknow jail and instructed Senior Jail Superintendent to plug the loopholes in security system.
Earlier a senior Intelligence department official visited lucknow jail for getting a first hand account of security in place after an alert was sounded following the Bopal jail break.
The officer was shocked to find that despite the high security barrack housing nine ultras of Harkat-Ul-Jehade-Islami (HuJI), four of laskar-E-Taiba (leT), three of Jaish-e-Mohamed (JeM), two of Tahrik-e-Taliban and one of SIMI, besides hardened criminals, none of the security measures had been esnured to avert any exigency.
The officers found visitors freely meeting terrorists, hardened criminals without the jail adminstration maintaining any record or filming them. Thus the local police too failed to keep a tab on associates or those helping ultras lodged in the jail.
The officer also observed that convicted Pakistan national Mohamed Abid aka Fatte was getting every facility and eatables inside the jail as per his choice.
The jail armoury was also not fully secured. The report said that only one armed jail personnel and four PAC jawans were deployed for the safety of armoury. The officer claimed that one coud easily overpower the lone armed guard and easily loot the weapons.
The report also pointed out that of the 52 Close Circuit Televisions (CCTv) cameras, only few were functional. But what flummoxed the officer was that the connection was done with a wire which is exposed and anyone could easily cut the cable and turn off the cameras.
On the entrance of district jail, the checking of vehicles was very lax and many a times vehicle even without registration numbers were allowed entry into the premises. At night, the entrance is locked but there are several passages through which anyone could enter and exit from the jail. The boundary wall also had gaps measuring three to four inches at every 25-meters which could be utilised to escape from the prison.
The report further pointed out that the district jail has 11 watch towers but they served no purpose as most of the towers had no armed guards owing to staff crunch.