Three Bangladeshi prisoners escaped from the Alipore Central correctional home in South Kolkata, ostensibly by drugging prison guards, the jail authorities said.
The matter came to the light during customary head counting of prisoners on Sunday morning.
The state government ordered a departmental inquiry into the incident and placed under suspension five jail guards for “dereliction of duty.”
“I have already ordered departmental enquiry and suspension of those whose negligence resulted into such an incident. Our government will not tolerate any kind of callousness on the issue of jail security,” West Bengal correctional services minister Ujjal Biswas said.
He admitted serious lapses on part of prison guards on duty on Saturday night led to the incident.
On December 2 last year, jailed ISIS suspect Mohammed Musiruddin alias Abu Musa, arrested for his alleged role in Burdwan blast slashed the throat of a jail warden in the correctional home, exposing the security lacunae.
Officials of the state correctional services department said preliminary investigations revealed that prisoners made the daring escape by tranquilizing guards by offering them sedative-laced sweets.
To climb down the prison walls they used bed sheets as ropes, said a prison department official requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to media.
{{/usCountry}}To climb down the prison walls they used bed sheets as ropes, said a prison department official requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to media.
{{/usCountry}}Despite repeated attempts additional director general (correctional services) Arun Kumar Gupta could not be contacted as he refused to take calls.
Another official of the department said that all the three were locked in Ward number 7 of the home at 6pm on Saturday. “Even when the routine counting was done at 12 midnight, they were present. But during the counting on Sunday morning, it was found that Faruq Hawladar, Iman Chowdhury and Firdous Seikh were missing,” he said.
Firdous (29), a resident of Madaripur of Bangladesh, was arrested in 2014 in connection with a robbery case. Faruq (24), a resident of Bagerhat in Bangladesh, was arrested in 2013 under the Arms Act while Chowdhury (25) was arrested in 2014 in connection with a kidnapping case.