RIPPER JAYANANDAN, CELLMATE ESCAPE FROM JAIL

RIPPER JAYANANDAN, CELLMATE

ESCAPE FROM JAIL

Two convicts broke out of the Central Prison here early Monday morning. They were ‘Ripper’ Jayanandan, a 45-year-old prisoner on death row, and his cellmate ‘Oopa’ Prakash, 40, who was serving time for burglary. Jayanandan is accused in eight murder cases, all for gain, including a double homicide, and 14 burglaries. He was brought to the Central Prison here on June 21, 2010 following his capture after his audacious midnight escape from the Central Prison, Kannur, in 2009. In 2007, he had made a futile attempt to dig out of the Central Prison, Viyyur, through the toilet inside his jail cell.The duo was housed in the maximum security ‘condemned cell’ in the UT block adjacent to the gallows. The police suspect that the jailbreak occurred after midnight.

The fugitives had cut through the cylindrical ‘dead latch’ of the padlocked cell’s grilled door, possibly with a hacksaw blade, and scaled the relatively low wall of the block. (The wall had been fortified and topped with an electrified barbed wire fence in 2011 to house terror suspect Thadiyantavide Nazeer.) They proceeded to the prison’s infirmary and stole bed sheets and clothes left out to dry on clotheslines.The convicts hastily assembled a crude ladder from wooden poles to scale the wall. (The poles are used to prop up banana saplings planted in the nine acres inside the 7-metre-high walls of the 125-year-old prison.)Once on top of the wall, they used a rope fashioned out of the knotted bed sheets and clothes to abseil down its frightening height, investigators said.The police said the escapees had shed their jail uniform for civilian clothes, which they had kept with them inside the cell, to mix easily with the civilian population.They had made up their cots inside the cell with vessels and pillows to make it appear as if they were sleeping. The prison’s extensive surveillance camera network was down at the time of the escape, purportedly due to a power outage. So far, the police have no clue about the fugitives.

Two prisoners, one awaiting capital punishment and the other convicted for three years of rigorous imprisonment, escaped from the high security Poojapura Central Prison here on Monday. Dreaded criminal and serial murderer Jayanandan alias Ripper Jayanandan and Prakash alias Ooppan Prakash, who is convicted for theft, are the convicts, who escaped from the prison.The authorities suspect that they might have got out of the prison during Sunday night. The prison authorities became aware of the incident when other prisoners noticed a long rope made of dhoties tied together hanging from the high wall of the prison, near the prison hospital. They had climbed the wall, which is over 25 foot high using poles which supported a makeshift shaft to store utensils of the prison hospital.

The prison authorities said that the convicts hood winked the wardens by placing dummies made pillows to create an impression that they were asleep inside their cells.P Jayanandan alias Jayan, 45, has been sentenced to death in two cases - in 2007 for the murder of 51- year-old Baby alias Devaki of Puthanvelikkara and in 2008 for the murder of Kalapurackal Sahadevan, 64, and his wife Nirmala,58. He tried to escape from jail while he was imprisoned in Viyyur Central Prison. He was then moved to Kannur prison from where he escaped in 2010. But he was later arrested from Ooty. "The road outside the wall leads to the district jail, which is behind the Central Prison, and hence it was less used, which is why nobody saw them escaping," said Sam Thankayyan, Central Prison superintendent.

He said that both the convicts were kept in the same cell and probably they might have been planning the escape for quite some time. They had also tampered with the lock of the cell, in such a way that the wardens could not easily identify it.The fugitives are suspected to have used hacksaw blades to cut through the lock. "It is definitely the negligence on the part of the officers on duty that they failed to find out the escape plan," the superintendent said. Action was taken against eight persons in this regard, he added.

Five officers, including deputy jailor Rajeev, who was the lock up officer on duty on Sunday night and four head wardens, were placed under suspension. Three guards, who were working under daily wages scheme, were terminated from service.A special team was constituted under deputy commissioner of police A Srinivas to tarck down the escaped convicts. Crime detachment assistant commissioner K E Baiju and control room (traffic) circle inspector A Pramod Kumar are also part of the team."An alert has been sounded across the state and their pictures have been flashed in TV channels," said Alexander Jacob, director general of police (prisons).

Prof. John Kurakar