Over 200 inmates escape Pakistani jail after earthquake panic, says official

ISLAMABAD - More than 200 prisoners escaped in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi late on June 2 after they were permitted to leave their cells following a series of earthquake tremors, local officials and police said.

The jailbreak began just before midnight and continued into the early hours of June 3 after hundreds of prisoners were allowed into the courtyard of the jail due to the tremors, provincial law minister Zia-ul-Hassan Lanjar told reporters outside Malir prison.

Police said the prisoners snatched guns from prison staff and forced open the main gate after a shootout, evading paramilitary soldiers. At least one prisoner was killed and three guards wounded, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon.

“I heard the firing for quite some time and then some time later, prisoners made their way out running in all directions,” Mr Bukhsh, a private security guard at a residential complex opposite the jail who goes by a single name, told Reuters.

He added that some of the prisoners entered the apartment complex before being taken away by police.

On June 3, a Reuters reporter at the site saw shattered glass and damaged electronic equipment inside the jail. A meeting room, for prisoners to see their families, had been ransacked. Anxious family members gathered outside the jail on June 3.

The jailbreak was one of the largest in Pakistan, Mr Lanjar said. The prison in the Malir district of Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, is in a poor residential and industrial neighbourhood.

Prisoners ran through the area through the night, some barefoot, chased by police, with police managing to round some up into police vans, local TV footage showed.

About 80 of those who escaped had been caught, said Mr Murad Ali Shah, the provincial chief minister.

The jail’s superintendent, Mr Arshad Shah, told reporters that there were 28 prison guards on duty at night, and that “only a few of such a large number of prisoners escaped”. He said the prison did not have security cameras.

Officials said the inmates, many of them heroin users, had been unnerved by the earthquakes.

“There was panic here because of earthquake tremors,” said Mr Lanjar.

The provincial chief minister said that around 80 prisoners had so far been caught, adding that it was a mistake for the prison authorities to have allowed the inmates out of their cells. He warned those still at large to hand themselves in, or face a serious charge for breaking out.

“Petty crime charges will become a big case like terrorism,” said Mr Shah. REUTERS