New Delhi: In an interesting development in the Bhopal encounter case, it has been found out that 2 years ago, the IG Prisons had some concerns over the security at the Central Jail in Bhopal and had written a letter to them pointing out the loopholes in the security system.
Even then, special thrust wasn’t laid on the jail security and eight members of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) who were suspects in a 2014 bomb blast case fled the Bhopal Central Jail in Madhya Pradesh, killing a security guard .
However, all the eight suspects were killed by the Bhopal Police in an alleged encounter at Malikheda on the outskirts of the city hours after they escaped.
BSP supremo Mayawati reacted on the matter and said that the unarmed Simi operatives could have been arrested again easily. She has demanded a judicial probe into the killing of eight Simi operatives.
She also added that the governments in the BJP-ruled states are using police to pursue the agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.
An IPS officer was removed hours after the Bhopal jailbreak by terror undertrials cried foul, claiming he had been made a "scapegoat" despite three of his alerts having gone unheeded and his not being involved with day-to-day prison security.
"I have been made a scapegoat," Sushovan Banerjee, the Madhya Pradesh jail additional director-general, told The Telegraph today as the clamour for a CBI probe grew louder. "Technically speaking, we look after jail administration. We are not even responsible for day-to-day jail security."
A senior police officer with over 25 years of experience, Banerjee received the news that chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had shunted him out soon after eight operatives of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (Simi) escaped from Bhopal Central Jail before dawn yesterday and got killed in a gunfight with police hours later.