New Delhi: All 57 people who were moved to a Chand Nagar shelter home from west Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh on Monday escaped soon after their transfer, by either scaling the walls or breaking the gate open, the police said.
Deepak Purohit, deputy commissioner of police (west), said the inmates included men, women and children, and they managed to escape the shelter home operating out of a Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in Chand Nagar.
“We caught 17 of them soon after they escaped on Monday itself, and put them back in the shelter home. Twelve others were held on Tuesday after technical surveillance led us to them,” Purohit said.
The officer said an FIR has been registered, and efforts are on to catch the remaining people.
Of the 57 who escaped, Purohit said 56 were migrants and homeless people putting up at a shelter home in Punjabi Bagh until Monday. They included people who were brought in from Kashmere Gate and Jamuna Bazar last month.
A government official, who didn’t want to be identified, said one of the homeless people in Punjab Bagh had tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, after which the others were moved to Chand Nagar. The results of three others are awaited. “We got the others at the shelter home screened and decided to move them to a newly opened shelter home in Chand Nagar,” the government official said. One more homeless man was added to this group of 56 transferred people.
{{/usCountry}}A government official, who didn’t want to be identified, said one of the homeless people in Punjab Bagh had tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, after which the others were moved to Chand Nagar. The results of three others are awaited. “We got the others at the shelter home screened and decided to move them to a newly opened shelter home in Chand Nagar,” the government official said. One more homeless man was added to this group of 56 transferred people.
{{/usCountry}}The transit was uneventful, the official insisted, adding that the problem began after they were moved to the shelter home. The DCP said that one of these people “misguided” the others and egged them on to escape.
A video of the escape showed people helping each other scale the spiked gate of the school. In the video clip, loud banging sounds can be heard from inside the school premises. They were later found to be sounds of bricks smashing against the school gate. From outside the school , one man who had escaped hurled bricks at the same gate to help break the lock open.
Soon, the lock gave way and migrants emerged in hordes on the road outside, even as local residents and motorists watched the drama unfold.
Some of these escaped migrants wore masks, others did not. They carried their bags as they walked away. One man was seen bringing his bicycle out, along with a woman and two children.
Soon, the police were alerted and they caught many of these migrants from the nearby neighbourhoods itself, Purohit said.
The escape comes in the wake of escapes by 36 people from two shelter homes in north Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar and Model Town between April 17 and 21. Unlike the latest case, they had all scaled walls on the school buildings at nights.