The Hindu : `Inspiration came from a book of great escapes'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 29, 2004

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`Inspiration came from a book of great escapes'

CHANDIGARH, JAN. 28. The police has arrested five more persons including a Deputy Superintendent of Burail Jail and four undertrials lodged there for their alleged involvement in the sensational jail-break taking the number of those arrested to twelve even as there was no clue yet on the escapees after six days.

All the five were produced in a local court today which sent them to police remand till February 2.

Ved Mitter Gill, Deputy Superintendent of the Burail Jail and four others including a suspected Pakistani spy Abid Mehmood arrested here last year under the Official Secrets Act, were produced before Judicial Magistrate First Class Phalit Sharma, who remanded them to police custody.

The other three arrested are Sher Singh, Nand Singh and Subeg Singh, who are facing trial for various charges including the Explosives Act.

Jagtar Singh Hawara, a Babbar Khalsa International militant, Jagtar Singh Tara and Paramjit Singh -- all three accused in Beant Singh assassination case -- and Devi Singh, another undertrial, who was attached as a ``langari'' (helper), had escaped from the high security prison on January 22 by digging a 14 feet deep and 100 feet long tunnel in the jail.

The Public Prosecutor pleading ten days remand for Gill, said the police had recovered a book ``True Stories of the Great Escapes'' from his residence and the sequences followed in the jail-break by the three accused in the Beant Singh assassination case ``were remarkably similar to a chapter mentioned in the book. Custodial interrogation of Gill is required in order to know how other conspirators in the case hatched such a big conspiracy'', he pleaded.

``The modus operandi adopted by the three accused in the Beant case in connivance with the jail officials is currently being investigated. At this juncture, a book has been recovered from the house of a senior jail official, about which he has made a confessional statement before the police that he had given the book to the three accused. A chapter in this book shows striking similarity to the modus operandi adopted by the accused. How else could they come to know about it inside the jail?'' the prosecutor argued.

Opposing this, the defence counsel maintained that mere recovery of this book from Gill's residence could prove little. ``This is a literature (book) which should not only be available with jail officials, but should be compulsory for them to go through it. Gill has a library of 200 books at his home and this book is just one of them. It is a fanciful theory of police linking an honest and upright officer to the mere recovery of this book. Their other charge about Gill's confessional statement over the book is false and baseless,'' the counsel said. --PTI

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`Inspiration came from a book of great escapes'