Missing prisoner found hiding in jail’s agri field
Much to the relief of jail officials, a prisoner, who was said to have escaped from the high security Banda district jail on Sunday evening, was finally tracked down in the fields of the jail campus on Monday afternoon. The prisoner tried to escape but unluckily he was badly injured after jumping from the jail’s inner boundary wall and so he was unable to scale the outer wall. Fearing that he would be thrashed by the jail officials, he hid in the thick bushes in the fields of the jail campus.
On Monday afternoon, when DIG (Jail) at Prayagraj, Sanjay Tripathi, reached the prison for inquiry, he and other jail officials took a sigh of relief when they heard that the missing prisoner was found in the bushes of the fields of the jail campus.
It is surprising that it took about 24 hours to search the missing jail inmate when he was hiding inside the prison itself and the entire jail campus was equipped with close circuit televisions (CCTV) directly monitored by DG (Jail) Anand Kumar since Mukhtar Ansari has been lodged there.
The prisoner was said to be engaged for agriculture work and on Sunday he arranged a big wooden log and with its help he climbed the main security wall later in the evening and jumped from there in the hope of escaping after scaling the outer wall. But as he jumped, he received critical injury which foiled his attempt.
It may be mentioned that the top jail authorities on Sunday evening became jittery after learning that a prisoner escaped. The officials were shocked as Banda is now a high security prison of the state as Bahujan Samaj Party MLA and don Mukhtar Ansari is also lodged there.
Circle Officer (City) Rakesh Singh said on Monday morning that prisoner Vijay Arakh, lodged in the jail since February 16 last, was found missing during the counting of prisoners on Sunday evening, triggering a search operation spanning several districts. “An inmate named Vijay Arakh who was lodged in barrack number 4 of Banda prison was reported missing at around 8:30 pm on Sunday. The inmate was last seen inside the jail at 6:45 pm. We have lodged an FIR in the matter at Kotwali police station of Banda and have started search operations to nab him,” DIG (Prison) Prayagraj Zone, Sanjay Tripathi said. Vijay, a resident of Girwa area of Banda district was lodged in the prison in February this year in a case related to theft and house trespass.