HYDERABAD: Sakhi `killer' Salahuddin, who made an audacious escape from Cherlapally jail early on Friday, was found lying in the bushes on the jail premises with fractured limbs on Saturday. Incidentally, it was a jail warder Venkatramanarsaiah, "suspended for the prisoner's escape", who stumbled upon the immobile prisoner, writhing in pain.

The warder and his colleague Md. Mahmood Ali, who were suspended for Salahuddin's cheeky escape, began desperate searches on Saturday. While Ali went to the fugitive's possible hideouts around the city, Venkatramanarsaiah ventured into the Nuclear Fuel Complex campus adjacent to the jail.

After scouring the area in vain till afternoon, the warder returned to the 46-feet-high sentry tower from where the convict tried to slide down using a rope, but fell down after it snapped. "I had a hunch he could still be around. No one can walk out without a scratch after such a fall," he explained.

The tower was surrounded by vast tracts of land filled with thick foliage and quarters of the jail staff on one side. Walking by, Venkatramanarasiah heard someone moaning near a huge bush. Alarmed, he called out his colleague Basaveshwar Rao from the nearby quarter and the two warders surrounded the bush and crawled in.

To their disbelief, Salahuddin was lying inside with fractured wrist, forearm and pelvic bone. "Sir, don't beat me. I fell down from that height and broke my waist," he reportedly urged the lathi-wielding warders with folded hands.

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