It was February 27, 1995. Four summers earlier at an election rally in Sriperumbudur, Dhanu, a suicide bomber of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), had assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, who was widely tipped to return as Prime Minister of India. The LTTE was soon banned in India. Yet, its operatives were making news in Tamil Nadu on and off.
That February night bore testimony to the capability of the LTTE militants to spring audacious surprises. Around 10.15 p.m., nine LTTE prisoners walked out of two adjoining cells, which was strangely not locked, and made a daring escape from the Madras Central Prison. The jail was then located diagonally opposite the Madras Central Railway Station, a round-the-clock busy area. Once outside the fortress-like prison complex, they split into two groups and headed out in different directions. All of them were detenus under the Terrorists and Disruptive Act (TADA).
Within hours, Tamil Nadu was on high alert. Security had been beefed up all around, particularly along district and inter-state borders. By 1 a.m., many policemen were intercepting vehicles going out of Madras and checking if the facial features of the passengers matched with the facsimile images of the nine militants handed out to them.
News of their escape became cannon fodder for the opposition parties to target the first government of Jayalalitha (as her name was spelt then). Tamil Nadu Congress Committee former president Vazhapadi K. Ramamurthi mockingly said, the LTTE cadre were all “honourably released following an understanding between the AIADMK and the militant outfit”.
An embarrassed administration resorted to damage control. It transferred Inspector General of Police (Prisons) T.S. Panchapakesan to the State Electricity Board, considered to be a dummy post. Five prison warders were arrested and summarily dismissed from service. Seven others including the Jail Superintendent, Additional Superintendent, a Jailor, a Deputy Jailor and a Chief Head Warder were suspended from service. The government ordered a judicial inquiry by retired Madras High Court judge Justice G Ramanujam to ascertain the circumstances of the jail escape.
Questions arose about the likely complicity of prison staff in facilitating the escape of the militants. “Under the jail manual, the warder should lock the cells; the head warder should check whether the cells have been locked; and another warder should take charge of the cells and again verify that they have been locked. So, either the cells were deliberately left open or the LTTE men used duplicate keys,” wrote the Frontline, a sister publication of The Hindu.
“What caused concern, the sources said, was that the unlocking of the rooms had not been checked either by the warder, the head warder and the warders who came for the first and second shifts last night. Also, the warder who was in the quarantine area had not blown the whistle, or taken any immediate steps to flash the message and prevent the escape. The connivance of the staff in the escape was strongly suspected,” said a report published in The Hindu dated March 1, 1995.
However, officers of the ‘Q’ Branch, a specialised police wing which maintained surveillance on militant and extremist activities, insisted the prisoners had escaped using bedsheets as as ropes, tying a steel angle at one end, which was used as a clamp on the wall. The Frontline said, policemen who simulated the exercise concluded that it was “perfectly” feasible.
The absence of watch towers on the compound walls was cited to have facilitated the escape bid. A police officer also claimed, “It is not as if the LTTE men had a free run. Some of the warders were overpowered and tied up.”
Luck, however, ran out for some of the escaped militants. Three of them, who managed to board a train to Gummidipoondi and later took a bus bound for Srikalahasthi in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, were cornered by police who stopped the bus at Arappakkam on the inter-state border around 1 a.m. Balan and Balendran were captured, but Menon alias Kutty bit a cyanide capsule and fell dead at a casuarina grove where he had run hoping to escape.
Another militant Shanmugavelu’s body was found alongside the Cooum river near the prison complex. Balan and Balendran told the police, he was the first to scale the prison wall and jump but was injured. Realising he can’t go far, he asked the others to proceed and consumed a cyanide capsule. How the militants got access to the cyanide capsule, which every LTTE cadre were required to hand around their necks, remained a mystery, as also their access to some cash.
The escapade invited a backlash from the prison authorities – they beat up other TADA detenus. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties moved the Madras High Court, which directed V Radhakrishnan, the judge of the Designated Court II to visit the jail and submit a report. The inquiry report revealed 87 inmates including 27 TADA detenus “suffered from contusion, multiple abrasions, bruises and lathi and rod marks.”
On March 14, the prison witnessed a riot by the inmates who were angry over the attack by the warders. They climbed the terrace of their blocks and “threw stones, bricks, aluminium plates and mugs into the nearby Park railway station,” according to a contemporaneous report. They returned inside after protesting for three hours.
Tailpiece: When Balan and Balendran were nabbed they made a request to the police which embarrassed the latter. They said they were “overwhelmed by grief” over the death of one member of their group and said they needed “some good cigarettes” to calm themselves. The police posse was not amused. The two had to settle for a cup of tea. (The Hindu, March 6, 1995)
(Assistance for overcoming suicidal thoughts is available on the State’s health helpline 104, Tele-MANAS 14416. and Sneha’s suicide prevention helpline 044-24640050)
