Hyderabad: Eleven undertrials escaped after breaking through a wall at the Erragadda Mental Hospital on Monday midnight.
Panic reigned at the prisoners’ ward as the inmates, led by a convict in a drug case named Fahauddin Qureshi, a resident of Chapel Road, Nampally, ran amok vandalising hospital property and attacking other in-mates.
During the five-hour-long drama, the inmates made a hole in the wall at the rear of the building using an oxygen cylinder and escaped while security officers and the police watched helplessly. The convicts burned many bundles of case sheets kept in a nursing room inside the enclosure.
Though the police managed to trace down seven of the escapees, four others, who had been brought from Chanchalguda Jail, are still at large. Sources said that Qureshi, who had allegedly planned the entire episode, escaped in a vehicle towards the Mumbai highway with his second wife who had tried to meet him a few minutes before the ruckus started. Police said that he had gone first to his house where he picked up a Tavera vehicle.
Next: Escape seems pre-planned
Escape seems pre-planned
Hyderabad: While the police has laun-ched a manhunt for those who escaped from the Erragadda Mental Hospital, the hospital superintendent has started an internal inquiry into the matter.
The incident started at around 8.30 pm after Fahauddin Qureshi’s wife was not allowed to meet him. Since she did not have a permit to meet him at that odd hour, the authorities sent her back.
“At 8.30 pm, Qureshi started acting violently, abusing the ward staff and beating up the inmates. First, he locked the enclosure from inside and started breaking the electric bulbs to darken the area. He threatened to harm the inmates if any hospital staff tried to enter.
He pulled out a cable and beat up many inmates. He and his aides then broke open the nursing room, where the casesheets and medical equipment were kept, and brought them to the corridor.
The bundles of casesheets were then set ablaze, creating utter panic among the inmates and hospital staff,” said hospital superintendent V. Pramod Kumar. The enclosure, which housed 60 prisoners, soon resembled a war zone with inmates screaming and thick smoke engulfing the area.
By the time the police reached the spot, nothing was visible due to the smoke and only silhouettes of inmates running around and screaming were seen. At around 1.30 am, Qureshi and the others made a hole in the wall with an oxygen cylinder.
Qureshi knew that he could make a hole in the wall as he had studied the wall earlier, said sources. Eleven of them passed through the hole and ran out of the compound through a basti located behind the institution.
After escaping, Qureshi reached his home within an hour. Cops suspect that somebody may have picked him up from a preplanned spot. A source from the hospital also revealed that he was using a mobile phone inside the prison.
Sources said that Qureshi must have planned the escape days back and executed it on Monday.“We caught seven people — six of them from outside Erragadda and one from near the hospital,” said West Zone DCP V. Satyanarayana. The other four convicts are still missing and a search mission has been initiated to nab them.
Meanwhile, the S.R. Nagar Police, which is investigating the escape of the undertrials, said that a case has been registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
“We have booked a case after the accused damaged a part of the prison ward and burnt casesheets. We are investigating the matter from all angles, including if the hospital staff had any role in the escape of the prisoners,” said a senior police official.
Next: Cops watched as 11 prisoners fled
Cops watched as 11 prisoners fled
K.K. Abdul Rahoof | DC
Hyderabad: The dramatic escape of 11 prisoners from Erragadda Mental Hospital occurred despite a police force being summoned immediately to deal with the situation. Local policemen were rushed to the hospital following intimation from the hospital authorities.
However, they were unable to stop even a single prisoner from escaping. The incident continued for five hours with inmates burning casesheets and breaking the wall.
Police officials investigate after 11 inmates escaped from the Erragadda Mental Hospital in Hyderabad on Tuesday. — PTI
The local cops were completely helpless and no additional police force was called in. According to hospital superintendent V. Pradeep Kumar, more than 40 policemen were inside the hospital premises at the time of the incident.
“I informed the local police and other higher officials soon after the violence started. Cops from the local police station as well as other police stations came to the spot,” Kumar said.
The cops just watched as the prisoners escaped from the hole they had dug in the wall of the building. People living behind the hospital said that the police officers were standing on top of the hospital building and telling them to take care of their own safety.
“The cops told us to safeguard ourselves from the prisoners who were escaping the building through the wall. They said that the prisoners were armed with scissors and other iron equipment that they had taken from the hospital,” said a person who lives in the locality.
While those who lived near the hospital locked themselves inside their homes, the rioting prisoners made off with clothes of the residents that were drying outside.
West Zone deputy commissioner of police Satyanarayana claimed that the policemen were busy rescuing other inmates of the ward while the prisoners were escaping.
“There was utter panic with smoke and fire inside the prison. We had to rescue the other prisoners who had been beaten up by the main gang. We rescued 49 of them and moved them to a safe enclosure but the others escaped,” Satyanarayana said.
It’s a mystery how such a large police force could not stop the prisoners from escaping when the whole incident lasted for nearly five hours.
