A list available shows no less than 71 sentries, who should be guarding Bhopal jail, are working for bureaucrats, senior police officials or in government offices — and, even, former jail ministers. The principal secretary (jail) has nine sentries at service. It was not clear if they work in the PS’ office or his bungalow or both. Besides, six sentries work for a deputy IG, while it is five each for an additional IG, a deputy IG of jails and central jail superintendent. Three sentries work for another DIG (jail). The chief minister’s office, too, has a sentry from the jail. So has the office of a deputy secretary to the CM. The jail minister has two sentries, while the director general (jail) has one.

The list has names of animal husbandry minister Antar Singh Arya, who once held the portfolio of jail, and former jail minister Jagdish Devda. Another sentry-served name is that of former chief secretary Anthony de Sa. The list mentions other authorities by designations, not names. Overall, the list features 80 jail department personnel, out of whom 71 are sentries. The rest are safaikarmi (cleaners) and drivers. The sentries, as per the list, are engaged in work outside jail.

National crime record bureau said Madhya Pradesh last year had 4,111 jail staff against the sanctioned posts of 5744. It meant that only 71% of the posts were filled up. Retired additional inspector general Jail GK Agrawal said more than half of the jail sentries are engaged in duties not related to security; instead in offices and officers’ bungalows. “This phenomenon is not confined to Bhopal Central Jail, but almost every prison in the state. Why this, when there is huge shortage of sentries in jails?” he asked.

RTI activist Ajay Dubey agreed with Agrawal. Giving sentry non-jail job was compromising jail security, he said. The phenomenon is more glaring in Bhopal as it has a number of high-ranking officials, he added. Director-general (jail) Sanjay Chaudhary said the department’s high-ranking officers were entitled to have facilities of orderlies. They did not need to have additional staff for personal reasons, he added.

The October 31 early morning Bhopal Central jail-break may have been averted had the government, jail department and state police taken serious note of a series of communications during the month and promptly acted to streamline the security of the high-security jail in the Madhya Pradesh capital.

According to sources in the state police, a series of letters had been written by jail department officials to the Bhopal central jail and the state police headquarters for bolstering security at the jail in the wake of the Uri attack and the surgical strikes across the LoC by India. However, nothing concrete took place on the ground. Three years ago, then IG Jail GK Agrawal had written to then MP chief secretary Anthony de Sa and the central government about gaps in security at jails in MP.

It is also learnt that the eight SIMI men, who were killed in an encounter, had planned their escape from Bhopal Central Jail over the last two months and executed it within 45 minutes early that morning. According to the city police probing the jailbreak, it took just 45 minutes between 2 am and 3 am on Diwali night for the fugitives to make their getaway after murdering head warder Ramashankar Yadav and tying up another warder Chandan Singh.

According to Singh's statement, he and Yadav were on duty for the 2-6am shift at the jail's Block B, which has three sub-blocks A, B and C, each having six cells. After reporting for duty just after 2 am, Yadav went to check sub-block A while Singh went into B. Just as Singh went to check cell No. 19, 20 and 21 respectively. The trio forced Singh into cell No. 19 and tied him up with a towel and bed sheets after taking his whistle and gagging him with cloth, and locked the cell behind them.

Around the same time, Singh heard Yadav crying out in pain, and realised that his senior colleague had been attacked by other SIMI men in sub-block A. After some time, everything went silent. Around half an hour later, at about 3.25 am, other jail guards who were on duty came to the jail's B Block and found Singh locked up and Yadav lying dead. According to sources privy to the investigation, the statements of around 10 jail staff have been recorded. Sources also said kitchen utensils were regularly disappearing from last three months and the jail administration used to note them as missing but did not bother to check the cells of the SIMI men.

Meanwhile a new CCTV footage showing that SIMI men were freely roaming in the Bhopal jail emerged on Friday evening, a day after an audio clip allegedly featuring conversations among police officials involved in the encounter had surfaced. In the audio clip, whose authenticity is yet to be confirmed, cops could he heard telling each other to shoot SIMI men raising suspicion over authenticity over the encounter. The men, who were said to have jumped Bhopal Central Jail on Diwali night, were killed near Malikheda on the outskirts of Bhopal.

But, Friday footage believed to be of a CCTV camera installed near the cells of the SIMI cadres showed eight killed SIMI men roaming freely at the B block during the day time. Aired by a local television channel, the SIMI men in the CCTV footage could not be identified. The audio clip, featuring walkie-talkie conversations of cops, fuelled further suspicion that they were keen to kill not capture alive the eight men. The senior police official asks on the walkie-talkie whether all the five (of the eight) men were fleeing together. (IPA Service)