Most juveniles escaping Home secured by Chennai police
As many as 33 of 74 inmates managed to escape from the home in a matter of minutes.
Chennai: Tense moments prevailed on Monday afternoon in the lone Government Observatory Home in the City after a group of inmates, who had fled from the facility, stormed back into the campus threatening to slit their own throats with sharp objects, in full view of their kith and kin and the media persons covering the breakout from the home.
As many as 33 of 74 inmates managed to escape from the home in a matter of minutes. The drama ended ultimately with 29 boys of them, including a very violent quartet, taken into custody by cops while the hunt is on to trace the rest.
A clash had broken out at around 11.45 am among the inmates fleeing the juvenile home. The din from the house gave jitters to anxious parents who had come to the home for a bail meeting. They raised the alarm after they saw a group of teens helping each other scale a barbed wire-topped compound wall and lower themselves into Otteri Nullah, at around 12.30 pm. Some of the visitors recorded the scenes of inmates fleeing on their mobile phones.
On information reaching them, the cops launched search parties looking for the escaped inmates alongside the waterway for a stretch of about 5 km on either side of the home. This lockdown forced most of those who fled from the home to hide under the bushes.
At around 2.30 pm, four boys, drenched in the polluted water of the waterway, scaled their way back into campus and tried to escape through the corridors of the Juvenile Justice Board, which was gearing up to hear the bail pleas.
The boys were armed with blades and broken glass pieces and they threatened to slash their wrists and necks if anybody tried to stop them from fleeing.
Realising the media glare was on them, the boys also appealed through the cameras for their release from the home. Their parents who had come to take them out on bail suggested they calm down, but in vain. One of the inmates slashed his wrist and his rear neck area while others also slit their necks. As four of them turned threateningly towards JJB, the judicial staff locked themselves in sensing that the boys were not happy with them.
Meanwhile, the cops who got to the spot in civvies talked the boys to drop the escape bid and turn themselves in. The unrelenting inmates continued to bang their heads on JJB doors and the cops then rounded them up and had them sent to hospital following first-aid rendered from 108 ambulance teams which were already on campus and treating several inmates who had injured themselves in their escape bid. The home personnel injured in the breakout were also treated on campus.
