AHMEDABAD: Guards in western India have foiled an attempt by prisoners accused of deadly bombings to tunnel their way out of jail using food plates as tools, officials said yesterday.
Authorities at Sabarmati prison found a six-metre tunnel behind one of the barracks housing 14 men accused of killing 57 people in a series of bombings in Gujarat’s main commercial city of Ahmedabad in 2008.
“When I asked the inmates of the barrack about the tunnel, three of them confessed they had dug it,” P C Thakur, a police inspector general, told reporters in Ahmedabad.
All three of the men who dug the tunnel are qualified engineers and apparently used plates to dig during the time they were allowed to work in a garden behind the cells, Thakur said.
The tunnel was discovered during a routine check by authorities who noticed that a particular patch in the garden was soft.
“A further probe by the jail authorities revealed that the tunnel was high enough for a man to crawl through,” another official said, adding that it would have taken more than two months to build the secret route.
An inquiry has been launched into security lapses.
The prisoners involved are facing trial over more than a dozen bomb blasts on July 26, 2008 in Ahmedabad.
Defreeze Ramdev’s trust accounts: HC
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court yesterday directed the Income Tax department to defreeze the 11 bank accounts of Patanjali Yogpeeth Nyas, a trust run by Baba Ramdev.
The IT Department had sealed the trust, after it failed to pay the first instalment of Rs7.5m out of the total tax of Rs346.8m.
A division bench of Justice Badar Durrez Ahmed and Justice R V Easwar said in the order: “We direct the attachment order (of bank accounts) be lifted subject to petitioner (Patanjali Yogpeeth Nyas) paying Rs21m (as Income Tax) by March 15.”
The bench, refusing to stay the recovery proceedings, asked the Income Tax Commissioner (Appeals) to decide the appeal of Patanjali Yogpeeth by March 31 and disposed of the plea.
AFP & IANS
